


And Once To The Wolf

by VioletK



Series: bow your head, raise your soul [1]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe - Human, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, BAMF Connor, BAMF Markus, BAMF North, Dubious Ethics, Emotional Manipulation, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Genetically Enhanced Humans, Government Conspiracy, Gun Violence, Human Experimentation, Implied/Referenced Ephebophilia, Implied/Referenced Grooming, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Parent-Child Relationship, Playing fast and loose with biology, Power Imbalance, Secret Organizations, Slow Burn, everyone is a BAMF basically, no beta we die like men, probably, there's gonna be some fluff in there at some point
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-06-21 15:22:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 33,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15560700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VioletK/pseuds/VioletK
Summary: Trained since childhood to be the perfect weapon and follow orders without question, Connor is the best assassin the Institute has to offer in service to the government for matters that need to be kept quiet.Rescued from illegal child experiments in his teens and left to pick up the pieces, Markus is running out of time to prevent his friends and other people like them from succumbing to deadly side effects from their time at the Institute.A government conspiracy, a developing medical condition and an extended cover-up bring the two together from wildly different directions. Their cooperation, however, might be the only way to find the answers they both seek.Even if it means making sacrifices in the process.





	1. Target

**Author's Note:**

> This hitman!au started as a suspended fic over at the New ERA server and in two nights (and with the support of all the lovely people on that server, love you all!) spun into a wildfire, so here I am, slightly ignoring my original project and my other eternal WIP in favour of writing our favourite androids as assassins...
> 
> Welp, we're in it now peeps.
> 
> The way the Institute operates is loosely based on Division from CW's Nikita, a show that you should definitely be watching right now and that I have been rewatching for inspiration for this story (no seriously, go watch it if you're into spy stuff, it's incredible). It's Amanda's fault, really: her name combined with assassins pulled me straight back to that and here we are XD
> 
> The title comes from a Greek song called "Demeni" (Tied):   
>  
> 
>  _"...I haven't learnt, unfortunately, not to belong_  
>  _once to the shepherd, once to the corral, and once to the wolf..."_  
>   
> 
> My favourite version of the song is included in a playlist I made just for this story. You can find a link to it on Spotify in the notes below.

The ping of the elevator announced his arrival at Level -7. Connor’s hands reached up to fix his tie and button his jacket in place as the doors opened to the corridor beyond. A solitary recruit, easily distinguishable from an active agent by her white form-fitting uniform, was coming towards the elevator, but almost stopped dead in her tracks at the sight of him.

Connor let his eyes drift away casually as he exited. The young recruit slowed her pace considerably, and cast her gaze to the floor as they passed each other. He didn’t stop walking or looked her way again -he had a very specific place to be-, but he could feel her eyes on his back as he heard the sound of the elevator doors closing.

He had grown used to the staring a long time ago. Most of the time, it wasn’t even because of his reputation as the Institute’s most capable agent, though there were times when he would prefer it to be. He had brought the matter up to Amanda once, during one of their sessions, and she had patiently reassured him that the gossip only added to the myth that was Agent RK800. _A myth that many young recruits will strive to emulate_ , she had said with a gentle smile over her delicate teacup. He couldn’t see how the fact that he was the longest serving agent of the Institute would motivate them more than his record, but Amanda had stood by her answer nonetheless.

Ostensibly a decorative touch, Connor suspected the grey metal panels lining the sides of the corridor were there more to hide the concrete of the walls from view than anything else. Originally a nuclear bunker, the government had established this location as the organization’s base of operations, both to give them as much space to condition and train new recruits in as possible and to keep this specialized unit away from prying eyes. They had tried to spruce up the facility to the best of their ability, make it feel more like the ambitious research and training centre that it was, and not a claustrophobic concrete prison buried in the ground, like some recruits had called it once.

He tried not to put too much thought to the fact that the metal plating did not continue into the living quarters walls.

At last he reached the door he had been looking for. He rapped on it softly.

“Come in,” came a gentle voice from within. His back automatically straightened before he entered.

There wasn’t any other office in the bunker like this one. The metal sheeting on the walls had been exchanged for minimalist forest wallpaper on one wall and wooden panelling on another, floor fixtures adding to the universal overhead lighting and giving the room a warm welcoming feeling. The simple furniture added to the calming atmosphere of the space, white and teal accentuated by silver, clean and precise lines pleasantly soothing at first sight. This had been Connor’s favourite room in the compound even as a young recruit: through the chaos of constant tests and training, the harmony and simplicity of this room had soothed his mind every time he came for his weekly evaluations.

In one of the semi-circular couches on the other side of the room, calmly preparing a grey teapot, was a dark-skinned woman. Shimmering dreads twisted in a bun at the top of her head, clothing as impeccable as always; she seemed to both fit right into this peaceful corner of the world and stand out at the same time. She didn't lift her eyes off her task, but her lips spread into a thin smile. “Connor,” she greeted in a sweet voice.

“Amanda,” Connor greeted in turn, stepping fully into the room and closing the door behind him. Amanda was more than Connor’s handler: she had always been there, from his training to his general education to his cognitive tests; more importantly, she was the one that conducted his psychological evaluations, a sounding board for all his feelings and thoughts. In a way, she was the closest thing he had to a mother.

Though he would never call her that. Not even in his head.

“I am so glad you could make it in such short notice. Please,” she gestured to the sofa opposite from her.

Connor nodded and gratefully sat on the comfortable white leather, undoing the button of his jacket to avoid creasing his neatly pressed suit. “I have a new assignment for you,” she continued, replacing the lid of the pot. “I know it hasn't been long since your last mission, but…” Her smile seemed to spread, become more genuine. “…you were the only logical choice.”

“Of course. I understand.”

“And, of course, I wanted to see how you were doing after last week’s events.”

His fingers suddenly itched for the coin in his pocket, but he forced his hands to remain curled into loose fists in his lap. There was no reason to be nervous now. In truth, he had hoped to speak about the matter again, but had refrained from doing so as not to raise any concern in his handler. Waiting for her to bring it up had been the logical choice.

“So how are you feeling, Connor?” Amanda asked pleasantly, pouring tea in two small grey teacups. “Are you still feeling troubled?”

Connor focused his gaze on the rose centrepiece in the middle of the glowing coffee table instead of his handler’s face. He reached down to take the tea cup in his hand. “No,” he answered truthfully, or almost. “I have considered all the variables, like you suggested, and have come to the conclusion that there was no other outcome to the mission. I had to fulfil my orders.”

Though he still thought about that mission even a week later. That rogue agent, holed up in the restaurant with the little girl _-Emma Phillips, 9 years old, part of cover as little sister-_ , demanding to talk to an agent of the Institute on open police lines. Requesting enough thirium to supply the conditioning department for a year. A nonsensical demand, but Connor hadn’t told him that. Instead, he had talked with him. Talked to him about his foster family, his little sister Emma, how his behaviour was scaring her and would blow his cover. In retaliation, the blond had shouted down the phone about how Connor could not possibly understand what it was like being a human pin cushion for the Institute, how they had ruined his life until he was taken in by the Phillips family, and Connor had pretended to understand his ramblings. He had calmly interjected that Emma needn’t know about what he had gone through, and the blond had faltered. It hadn’t been easy, but with a little more coaxing, he had allowed Emma to go to the cops outside so that they could speak more openly, and that was when Connor had taken the shot from across the street, shooting him right through the chest.

He couldn’t see him through the scope after he collapsed below the window, but his final words had come through his earpiece, broken and strained as the rogue agent chocked on his own blood.

_“You l-lied to me, C-Connor… Y-you l-lied to m-me…”_

The line had gone silent after that.

“PL600-A had to be deactivated and I was assigned to carry out that task. There was no other possible outcome.”

Amanda regarded him for a moment. “But…?”

Connor repressed a sigh. Amanda was too perceptive to let anything slip. He could, however, divert her attention. “His motives for taking the girl hostage are still not clear. Why would he ask for such a large amount of thirium? The Institute supplies all agents enough for a full month of use. If his intent was to sell it, he wouldn’t have made such a spectacle out of the hostage situation because he knew we would be able to track him.”

Amanda took a thoughtful sip of her tea. “So you are not still in conflict over your obligation to deactivate him,” she asked, setting the cup back down.

PL600-A clinging to the little girl as he held a gun to her head. Clutching her to his chest before releasing her to the police. Little Emma giving him a kiss on the cheek and not letting him out of her sight as she walked out. The worry is his face as he watched her go.

The betrayal in his voice among the halting breaths and gargling blood.

“No,” he replied, taking a sip from his cup. “It was my mission. My emotions have little place in the matter.” As they didn’t now, either. Amanda had called him in for an assignment. It would not bode well to show emotional instability right before an assignment.

“Of course,” she conceded. “But I _am_ here to talk about things that might be bothering you, Connor. It is important that you are functioning at peak efficiency at all times. We wouldn’t want you to be compromised during a mission.”

Connor gave what he hoped appeared to be a grateful nod. Amanda’s concern about his performance and well-being was always touching, but the scrutiny today was only putting him on edge. And he had to be focused. “I believe I was here to receive an assignment.”

Amanda set her teacup down. Straight to business. “A man has come into possession of some of our assets’ identities. That will need to be rectified. It's a simple recovery mission, nothing you haven't done before.”

Connor’s eyebrows furrowed. That was a serious infringement of their security. It wasn’t within his duties to maintain the Institute’s integrity and anonymity, but he still took the inability of those who _were_ responsible for it as a personal offence.  

The woman stood up purposefully, walked over to the glass desk at the side of the room (Amanda wanted her work space and therapy area to be completely separate while still occupying the same room) and picked up a tablet. “This is the man you are looking for,” she said, passing it to him.

Connor lowered his cup to the table, unlocked the tablet and examined the photo that greeted him. It appeared to have been lifted from some kind of security badge. Pictured was a middle-aged man – _early 50s, crow’s feet, greying hair at the temples_ –, with a tall forehead and a well-trimmed circle beard, blue eyes sharp as he looked into the camera.

“His name is Nathan Wesley. He is the current CEO of CyberLife. The information he has cannot fall into the wrong hands.”

“I understand,” Connor nodded and stood up to hand the tablet back. A copy of the file would have certainly been sent to his own device by now: he would browse the rest of its contents more thoroughly in the car. 

“Retrieve all digital files from his computers and any hard copies or notes you can find. Search both his office at CyberLife and private residence, we cannot be too thorough. No probing necessary. A package with the appropriate clearances will be delivered to your apartment later today.”

Connor nodded once more. “And what should I do with the target?”

Amanda got the meaning behind his question. Of course she would. “Nothing too permanent,” she eventually said with a small smirk. “Make sure he knows _you_ were there. As long as he is left alive and relatively mobile, his mental state is unimportant.”

An odd request, considering the man had _classified Institute information_ in his possession, but not out of the realm of things he had done for his employers before. They must think the target would be useful in other ways if leaving him alive was explicitly in Connor’s mission objectives. He gave her a nod. “I won’t disappoint you, Amanda.”

A knowing glint shone in her eyes. “You never have, Connor.”

 /0\

His mission had started well.

Infiltrating Nathan Wesley’s office at CyberLife had been easier than Connor had expected. There was hardly any place the Institute couldn’t gain access to, and apparently a multi-billion corporation was as easy as your basic laboratory. The top floor of CyberLife Tower had been mostly void of people, and those who were there did not pay him much attention as he walked through in his staff uniform and surgical mask, dragging a cart of cleaning supplies behind him. Wesley had been out for a business dinner, as his schedule had indicated, so the CEO’s office had been empty for all of the fifteen minutes it had taken Connor to copy all files from his computer and rifle through binders and notebooks for any relevant information before slipping back out.

He hadn’t bothered wiping the cameras. Wesley would know he was there anyway.

And that’s how he had found himself in the CEO’s home office an hour later, going through the same motions again; but this time, he was even more methodical. He set his Institute-issued hard drive to automatically siphon all files from the man’s computer and his cloud storage (Connor had gained access to his phone two days prior, the morning after Amanda gave him his assignment, after subtly swiping it while the target was taking lunch in the cafeteria at CyberLife, Connor milling around posing as a potential new developer, and had downloaded all files from there, as well) and set about riffling through all of Wesley’s papers. There were a lot of progress reports, contracts, settlements, company memos, but nothing that would resemble a list. An eidetic memory helped when he couldn’t sit and photograph every single document, and he moved on to examine the desk for hidden compartments or even rudimentary envelopes stuck under the main surface.

The moment he closed the safe set in one of the drawers _-passports, bank statements, lease, bullets-_ , light flooded the room through the windows. No other car had passed by in the past twenty minutes.

The target was back.

 _Shit_ , Connor allowed himself to swear in his head. The files needed another two minutes to download, and he had still to go over the contents of the second safe in the room _-245mm by 365mm, electronic lock, behind copy of The Battle of Chesma-_. He had hoped to have at least finished the retrieval of the digital files before the target returned.

Oh well. Time to expedite the plan.

Taking his gun out of his thigh holster and adjusting the balaclava over his face, he rushed to duck behind the office door. The familiar weight in his hands kept him grounded as he held his breath.

The front door burst open. Keys rattled. Something was thrown on the armchair set in the main hall. Hurried footsteps came his way without pause. Connor held his breath, body taut as a bowstring.

A strip of light bathed the office as the door was pushed open, but the person responsible did not immediately come in. One tentative step, then two, then a gun appeared, followed by the man wielding it. Before he had a chance to check behind the open door, Connor stepped out of hiding, pressing his gun into the man’s back.

“Don’t move.” His voice was slightly muffled by the fabric of the balaclava over his mouth, but the silent threat in it was conveyed well enough.

Wesley (judging by his coiffed light brown hair) was shorter than him _-approximately 3.5 inches-_ , Connor observed coolly, and did not seem the least bit surprised to find a gun pressed into his back. On the contrary, he gave a breathy chuckle. “Let me guess,” he sighed, as if this whole thing was but a minor inconvenience. “You are here to give me a slap on the wrist. The bullet with the rose petal on my desk? Nice touch. Amanda’s calling cards are cute.”

“My employers sent me to retrieve the list of assets that you acquired,” Connor said, not letting his interest at the mention of his handler’s name show. “Cooperation is not necessary, but it would be in your best interest to comply with my demands. Raise your hands slowly and give me your weapon. Safety on.”

Wesley, to his mild annoyance, did the exact opposite and lowered his hands to his sides. “I cannot believe this,” he murmured in disbelief.

His gun pressed against his target’s back a little harder. “Raise your hands slowly a-”

“Of all the people she could have sent, she had to send _you_. This was either really smart or really stupid.”

Connor went still.

“What was Amanda’s excuse to convince you to come, hmm?” Wesley kept talking, though he did lift his arms as instructed. His tone was almost conversational. “That it would throw me off seeing you on the other end of the gun? Or did you come here to get some sort of misguided revenge?”

“I don’t see how this conversation pertains to my commands.”

“What’s the matter, Connor? Did you just realize that what we were doing was exactly what I said it was? It’s a little late for an apology, I believe.”

His thoughts came to a screeching halt. Wesley… knew him by name? And, even more importantly, had apparently met him before? His eidetic memory rarely failed, if at all, and never on matters regarding his missions.

Except for one. But that wasn’t his fault.

Had he met Wesley on the missing mission, shouldn’t that information have been included in Wesley’s file before this one? And it couldn’t be because his superiors didn’t know, because his target had implied that Amanda was aware of their apparent acquaintance. And Amanda knew better than to withhold crucial intel during his briefing. There was nothing more dangerous than sending an agent into a mission without disclosing all available information…

…unless this was just a test.

It wouldn’t be the first time.

“I don’t see anything I have to apologize for,” he said evenly, doing another sweep of the room with his eyes to locate possible camera locations he might have overlooked (which would be unacceptable even if this wasn’t a test). “My mission objectives are very clear and I always accomplish my mission.”

His target chuckled again, and this time, the sound stirred something unpleasant in Connor. Slowly, probably to avoid a bullet to his heart, he turned around to face him. Wesley was thinner than his security badge photo suggested, but his eyes were no less inquisitive behind thick rimmed glasses. The feeling in his chest only grew. “Ever Amanda’s faithful lap dog, aren’t you? I see that hasn’t changed much.”

Connor pulled the hammer back with a satisfying _click_. “The list. Where is it?”

Wesley looked down at the weapon pointed straight at his heart, seemingly unimpressed. “Is that supposed to scare me?” He took a step forward, and the muzzle pressed into his chest. “Amanda doesn’t want me dead. She knows better than to kill me.”

“Kill? No.” Amanda had said no to probing Wesley’s mind, but that was no hindrance at all. The muzzle dragged over his target’s chest and came to a stop against the joint of his shoulder. “Though other methods of persuasion are not off the table.”

One corner of Wesley’s mouth lifted. “And here I thought you disregarded everything I taught you. I think you enjoyed it a little _too_ much.”

It was at this point that Connor noticed the flickering red dot dancing across the room.

On instinct, he shoved the man before him to the floor and ducked, right as the crack of a rifle tore through the night and a bullet wheezed past the point his and Wesley's heads had just been. It flew through the glass cabinet behind them, showering the floor with shards.

The target grunted on impact and supported himself on his elbows. “I suppose they’re not with you, then?”

Adrenaline sang in Connor’s veins as he crouched with his back to the mahogany desk. A flimsy cover against a sniper rifle, but at least the shooter outside wouldn’t know where exactly he was standing. The windowsill offered some additional cover, making aiming at anything below its height difficult. He peered over the wooden surface to look outside, trying to see the glint of a scope under the night lights, anything to tell him where the shooter was located. The download process of the information he was tasked with retrieving was long over, but he didn't want to risk exposing himself more by reaching over and grabbing his hard drive, merely a foot away on the desk.

As a reply, a second shot tore through the window. He barely ducked to dodge it.

“Look at you,” Wesley huffed, shuffling forward to take cover next to him. “Pinned behind a desk by a sniper with little old me. Where’s your precious Amanda now, Connor?”

By _god_ , he wanted to shut the man up, just so that he could think about the situation properly without the implications of his words eating into his concentration. Whether there was any semblance of truth to his words or not, Connor was pretty certain by now that this was no test set by his employers.

He risked another look. He caught sight of the entry holes in the glass, and quickly shot outside twice. Whoever was outside, he needed to have a few words with them.

Before disposing of them, of course.

But he needed a few words with Wesley, too, and the man had just sprung forward in an attempt to reach the door of the room. Connor immediately shifted his aim and shot his leg – not to disable it, but just to graze him. The man cried out in pain and collapsed, but he was far enough away to shuffle to the entry hall and out of his line of sight.

Satisfied that he wouldn't be going anywhere any time soon –lest he wanted to risk extreme blood loss–, Connor’s hand darted to the surface of the desk and yanked the hard drive away before following his example, narrowly missing another bullet on his way out.

He exited through the front doors –Wesley had left them open in his haste to reach his office– and ran around to the part of the garden facing the office window. He stopped shy of stepping around the corner. Whoever was shooting would have to be in the vicinity: the yard was walled off, with trees around it tall enough to hinder taking out a target with a sniper rifle, and the few surrounding houses did not offer much of a vantage point. Even he, enhanced with thirium and trained in handling several types of firearms with ease as he was, would have trouble making those shots outside of the cover of the trees.

Desperate times called for desperate measures. Connor dived behind some low hedges bordering the garden and crawled forward, just as the spot he had just vacated was hit by a bullet.

So the shooter only had the sniper rifle at his disposal _-one bullet per trigger pull, manual ejection of the shell from the chamber, suppressor-_. A disadvantage at close quarters. Especially against him.

Connor stood still to listen. The person must had realized they would get caught sooner or later, and the rustling of bushes to his far right indicated someone had just stood up and was currently making a run for it. He immediately gave chase.

He caught his first glimpse of the sniper when he climbed the peripheral wall. They were dressed in tight all-black clothing, apparently male in physiology _-narrow waist, broad shoulders, taller than average, buzz cut-_ and currently running at top speed towards a motorbike parked right outside the house. Connor took a shot right before he reached it.

The black-clad man stumbled to avoid the bullet, his gaze shifting to the offender still perched on the wall. The street light illuminated what part of his face was not covered by the neck gaiter pulled up to his nose: darker complexion and light eyes, the colour eluding Connor with the distance between them. He raised his gun to aim again, but the man reached for his bike with lightning speed, barely missing the bullet heading for his midsection. Next thing he knew, his adversary had pulled a gun from the side of the fuel tank and was taking aim right at him.

Connor immediately dropped back inside the garden, the bullet hitting the outside of the wall.

“Shit!” he cursed under his breath. He shoved his gun in its holster and sprinted back to the entrance, where he had seen something parked with almost careless finesse off the main path on his way into the house.

By the time the ignition override chip had kicked into gear and the headlights of Wesley’s expensive looking bike had come on (he would have to thank Lucy for her nifty little gadgets later), the shooter’s bike had roared to life and was tearing down the quiet street. Connor wasted no more time following him. Helmet be damned.

The roads of Detroit were not completely void of cars at this hour of the night, and the two weaved between them at speeds that were certainly illegal. The wind whipped angrily against his lashes as he resolutely kept his eyes on the nearly elusive sniper. Some cars honked at them, but neither hunter nor hunted paid them any mind. Connor almost lost his prey on a busier strip of highway, but caught sight of the bike tearing off the road and into a more dilapidated area of the city at the last minute. He took a too sharp turn to follow after him.

The shooter’s helmeted head whipped around when he realized Connor was still on his tail. He reached around with his gun and shot behind him, but Connor avoided the bullets easily enough. In reply, and with a more convenient line of sight, Connor returned fire. Even with the rider's attempts to swerve, it only took Connor three bullets to finally hit the back tire.

The awful screeching of the wheel as it scraped the tarmac violated the stillness of the night, and suddenly he was overtaking the shooter as his bike tilted to its side and practically flew from under him. Connor came to a precarious stop soon enough to see his prey roll off the side of the road and collide with a street light.

He wasted no time letting his borrowed bike drop to the ground, not even bothering to kill the engine, and advancing towards the person who had derailed his mission so spectacularly. The man was trying to sit on his knees painfully slowly, reaching for the clasp of his helmet. He had barely managed to take it off before Connor was on him, pushing him back down and pinning him with his knees. The man groaned in pain as Connor ripped off his flimsy attempt at a disguise to look at his face.

The man below him indeed had a darker complexion than his own (which, all things considered, was not that hard) and a faint stubble. He seemed to be wearing clothes appropriate for riding a motorbike: knee pads, boots, armoured jacket _-frequent rider, takes precautions-_. When he opened his eyes to stare at the heavens, Connor was surprised to see he had two different coloured irises: his right eye was blue, while his left was a clear green. _Heterochromia iridum_.

He levelled his gun at the man’s chest. “Who do you work for?”

The man coughed and writhed underneath him, a hand trying to grab at his side, which was pressed against Connor's knee. The placement was calculated; pain was a useful tool when extracting information from someone, and that was a nasty fall despite the armoured jacket. “Like I'd tell you,” he almost spat, but his words turned into a groan halfway through.

Connor pressed a little harder, and the man scrunched his eyes shut. “Who do you work for?” he repeated calmly. He didn't want to show the irritation at having been sidetracked during a mission bubbling inside him.

“Screw you,” he wheezed, hands grasping at the grass for something, anything.

“You jeopardized my mission,” Connor stated. “Why were you trying to take out Nathan Wesley?”

“Why was I trying to take out one of the vilest men to ever walk the earth?” the shooter asked more cheekily than Connor had assumed he could manage. “Why indeed.” Connor pressed his knee even harder against his side, earning an audible wince.

“You're coming with me,” he nearly growled, his gun hovering over the man's heart.

The man's odd-coloured eyes looked at him through half-closed lids. “Like hell.” And then he yanked Connor forward by his hands, slamming the discarded helmet hard against his head.

Stars erupted in his vision and he was roughly pushed to the side, his adversary scrambling to his feet. Connor tried to shake the pain away, using the street light for support to rise from the ground, but by the time he could open his eyes without the side of his head pounding, his borrowed motorbike had roared past him, the sniper riding away into the night.

Connor leaned heavily against the pole again. That wasn’t supposed to happen.


	2. Fallout

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Markus feels the weight of his actions, and his friends are not too happy. Despite the tension, a glimmer of hope comes forth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before I go on about the chapter, I would like to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who left kudos on, bookmarked and reviewed this story!!! I was not expecting such a large response to this, and it really warms my heart to see that so many people like this story already!
> 
> (also a couple of my favourite authours for this fandom bookmarked and left kudos and I very nearly expired, but that's another story XD)
> 
> I finished editing this bad boy 1 hour before I am due to go to a concert, but HELL YEAH I DID IT!!! This has to be the longest uninterrupted scene I have ever written in my life, so I hope it turned out alright. I managed to give a heart attack to my wife halfway through, so I think that counts for something XD (I love you, dear <3) 
> 
> After an extensive talk with my merry band of hitmen (you know who you are), I will be reviewing the tags to add another small plot I had in mind... but not now. Now I have to skedaddle. Chapter 1 has already been edited accordingly, if you would like to go back and reread it (a couple of small things have been added, but important nonetheless ;))
> 
> Enjoy!!!

The trek to their “base of operations” was rendered a particularly painful one as Markus held a hand against the sorest of his bruises, the one that gunman from Wesley’s house had put pressure on while pointing a gun to his chest. He had decided to ditch the bike he had stolen some five blocks away in case there was a GPS tracker on it; they had enough problems in their hands already, and the police snooping around would not be a welcome one.

He shouldn’t have listened to North. No, that wasn’t fair to her: he shouldn’t have let anger cloud his judgement. It had been so easy to let his inhibitions go and agree to North’s suggestion after he found out what Wesley was prone to do from his position of power. The hot white rage had blinded him to all the ways this could have gone wrong. He had jumped right in because of a damn sense of misguided duty. Of a remnant of overprotectiveness he had never been able to shake off. Of an overconfidence in the abilities the people that had stolen his childhood from him had imparted on him. Of a still raw grief gripping both him and the people he had sworn never to let down. And he had been caught red-handed.

This had been a mistake. A giant fucking mistake.

The house he and his friends had appropriated for their venture had been abandoned for some years, North had informed them, which is why they had chosen it in the first place. Other factors included the unusually fast internet connection and the similar abandonment of most of the houses in the neighbourhood, so the sight of them hauling various lab equipment inside wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows. Plus, it was out of the way enough not to be traced to him or his friends easily, so that afforded them some privacy and safety. A sense of paranoia had driven them to take such precautions, and after tonight, Markus was glad they had given in to it.

The neighbourhood was also shady enough that even the minimal number of neighbours wouldn’t bat an eye at the lights coming from inside, or the blinds they had installed on all windows that weren’t already covered with newspapers. The ones on the right hand window next to the door had a small gap in the middle, but the moment he stepped fully into view the slats snapped closed, and next thing he knew, the front door was being pulled open, and he was not surprised to see the one person who had known exactly what he had set out to do tonight stalking towards him.

North was two years younger than him and filled with so much hate in her lithe frame: it had been so heavy in her brown eyes when they met years after their last interaction that Markus almost hadn’t recognised her. The stoic expression that usually occupied her beautiful features had been exchanged for one of confusion at the sight of him now. Despite the late spring chill, she hadn’t grabbed a coat on the way out, leaving her thin blouse as her only barrier against the cold. “Markus? Where is the bike, I thought-” But then she noticed how he was favouring his right side, and stopped dead in her tracks. Her eyes widened. “What happened?”

Markus paused to take a deep breath, and his ribs screamed in protest. “I crashed the bike,” he said, his voice strained. “North, we-”

“Wait, where’s the rifle? Did you leave it behind?”

“ _Listen,_ I fucked it up-”

“What rifle?”

Both their eyes snapped to the house, and cold washed over him at the sight of Josh’s tall frame illuminated in the doorway. Goddammit, why couldn’t it have been _Simon-?_

“Josh, go back inside,” North threw over her shoulder, closing the distance between them to examine him closer.

“Wait – are you hurt? Where were you?” There was an edge of suspicion in his voice already, almost completely drowning the worry, and Markus was already bowing his head to avoid his gaze. Josh had been the one to keep them sane all those years ago, mere children with no one to tell them what to do for once, and now how had he repaid him?

“I said _go back inside_ ,” she pressed with a glance over her shoulder, a hand over the one clutching his side. “Why is that so hard to-”

“No,” Markus cut her off, “we have to tell them.”

“Markus-”

“North, I was made!” he almost shouted, her warning dying on her lips at his tone. “We have to tell them.”

On the porch, the floorboards creaked as Josh stepped forward to look at them more closely. His dark eyes were getting harder and harder. “What did you do?”

North didn’t look back at him. She took Markus’ arm and put it around her shoulders, even though he didn’t need the extra support much. The itch to connect with her, see what she was feeling right now, crossed his mind, but he shook it off as soon as it had manifested. “Let’s talk inside,” she said and helped him hobble along to the porch and then to the front door under Josh’s watchful eye.

The moment they were through the threshold, the man all but slammed the front door shut. With his cold stare, he rightfully looked the oldest out of all of them, the two of them merely children under his gaze. “Start talking. Both of you.”

The blond man sitting at the desk in the corner of the room raised his head and jumped to his feet at the sight of North supporting Markus’ weight. “Oh my god, _Markus!_ ”

He hadn’t thought it possible to feel any worse for what he almost did, but one look at Simon’s worried expression sent him careening into the deepest pits of shame. “Simon-”

“He crashed the bike,” North offered. “Can you look him over?”

Simon fixed her with a bewildered look in his blue eyes. “What part of _biochemist_ translates to _medic_ to you?”

The woman half shrugged. “The bio part?”

“Shut up, all of you,” Josh cut in just as Simon opened his mouth to reply. There was no room for argument in his tone. His arms were crossed over his chest and his eyes were fixed on the two of them. “What the hell did you two do?”

Markus looked at him as North unceremoniously dropped him on the couch. Apart from that, the desk, a couple of plastic chairs and some well-placed lamps, the living space was bare. “Josh-”

“This is about Nathan Wesley, isn’t it?”

His heart was tight in his chest. He wished he could deny it – hell, he wished he hadn’t gone through with it in the first place – but he couldn’t. And it was all on him. “Yes.”

Josh let out an annoyed sigh. “Did you kill him?”

“No, I-”

“But that’s what you went out to do. Kill ‘im.”

He took his time to unzip the armoured jacket and take it off (with some effort) before replying. Steeling himself. “Yes.”

On his left, Simon let out a shuddering breath. “Oh my god…”

Josh ran his hands over his head. Uncontrollable fury was written in every line of his body. “And you didn’t even tell us. You just made this decision on your own even after what we said and just ran with it. Didn’t give a damn about what we thought.”

“It was a mistake-”

“Damn right it was a mistake, but it’s a bit late to realize that, don’t you think?!”

“Give him some space, Josh.” North was back from wherever she had disappeared after dropping him on the couch like a sack of potatoes.

“Don’t get me started on you, North,” Josh rounded up on her, “because _you_ were the one that was all about killing that son of a bitch the other day.”

She threw a frozen bag of peas at Markus’ stomach with more force than strictly necessary. “Yeah, I was. And I still stand by that.”

Josh seemed to want to say more, but bowed his head to keep from snapping. “…and he saw you?” he asked Markus, restraint evident in his voice.

Markus took off his gloves and lifted his t-shirt to place the peas against his inflamed skin. “No,” he hissed at the sting of the cold. “Someone else did. Chased me. Shot out my back tire. He pinned me when I went down and saw my face. He was definitely trained.”

The black man cursed under his breath. Really, he couldn’t blame him. Anyone snooping into him could stumble upon what they were doing, and they couldn’t afford that. People’s lives were at stake.

Josh had started pacing now. His hands were on his waist, not unlike a scolding parent. “So was it worth it? Not giving a damn about what we had to say?”

“Josh-”

“No, you don’t get to talk right now! Neither of you,” he threw at the woman glaring daggers at him.

“What we did-”

“No,” he pointed a threatening finger at her, “shut up, you two went behind our backs-”

“Hey, you don’t tell me to _shut up-_ ”

“You _went behind our backs_ and decided to murder a man in cold blood, I have the right to tell you whatever I want right now,” he almost growled.

“That piece of shit _deserves_ to die after what he did to who knows how many kids!” North shouted, gesturing wildly with a hand.

“That is not for us to decide, North!”

“And who is it for, then?” she demanded. “A court? No one will ever get him on the stand and you know it!”

“And that makes you the executioner then?”

If looks could kill, the one that descended on North’s face at that moment would have had Josh cold on the ground in 0.2 seconds flat. “I was in that hellhole for _9 years_ , being _pinched_ and _prodded_ and turned into the perfect little soldier to do their bidding. If anyone should decide what happens to the people that did this-”

“We were in the same program, North!” Josh shouted is exasperation. “You were not alone in all this! Or did you forget that tiny room all four of us ended up in afterwards?”

By the way North’s eyes narrowed, she had not appreciated his point. “How can you even ask me, of _course_ I didn’t forget-”

“Then using your experience as an excuse does not justify cold-blooded murder when the rest of us said no!”

“And what,” she sneered, “we do what you want, _doctor_? Hold hands around a fire and sing a song?”

Josh was near glowering at the comment (and the derogatory use of his title). “That is _not_ what I want! What I want is for those people to face _justice!_ ”

“You want your justice, _fine!_ I want to see people like Wesley suffer and I wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep if he was dead!”

“But now he isn’t! And now he thinks someone is after him and will be on high alert, and worst of all, someone has seen Markus’ face, so _congratulations_ , I hope you _both_ got what you wanted.” And with one last spare look at Markus, he stomped off to the kitchen, away from all of them.

The silence that followed was stifling.

Markus’ mind drenched up an eerily similar scene: a dimly lit hotel room, a little over 16 years ago. Three single beds, laid with not so soft sheets; a camp bed, hastily pushed against the window, with a pile of linens on top of a bare pillow at the foot of it; and four scared little kids, the youngest barely 11, the oldest close to 14. They hadn’t talked to each other the first night, just let the smell of soot and smoke seep into the air and the generic linen and sat rigidly in their beds, half-waiting for a supervisor the policemen had told them wouldn’t come to collect them at any moment.

PJ500, a string of nothing with gangly limbs, had taken one look at the younger kids and claimed the camp bed. RK200, cautionary instincts drilled into him more heavily than the others, took the bed closest to the door. PL600-B, fearful eyes darting whichever way and fingers fidgeting at his sides, had almost immediately taken the middle bed right after him. WR400-A, a small thing with long hair in disarray and downcast eyes, had shuffled to the bed closest to the one by the window, biting her lip as she sat down.

 _“How long will we stay here?”_ WR400-A had murmured, as if someone would hear her. A stern look from PJ500 had silenced her, and they hadn’t spoken for the rest of the night.

PL600-B had asked a question the next night, after a group of psychiatrists had had the time to see all the children and explain, in soft terms, that the world they had known for most of their lives was gone. _“Who will tell us what to do now?”_

PJ500 hadn’t answered again. He hadn’t done anything since he came to the room, really. RK200 hadn’t been any different. WR400-A hadn’t looked anyone in the eye, but the way she had clutched at the pillow in her lap had spoken volumes.

The hint of hopelessness that had been ever-present since last week wasn’t dissimilar to what all of them had been feeling in that hotel room, and Markus wanted to kick himself for making it worse. Why had it been so hard to obey the rational part of his brain (one that sounded suspiciously like Carl) and not submit to the boiling rage hungering for some sort of release?

To his left, Simon had crossed his arms over his chest, shoulders hunched forward. He was looking at Markus with an almost betrayed look in his eyes, and it was tearing at his soul more than he thought it would. This whole effort was only possible because of Simon, and tonight, Markus had almost ruined everything because of his arrogance. “Did Wesley see you?” he asked in a small voice.

Markus immediately shook his head. “No, he couldn’t have. And I made sure to ditch his bike before coming here-”

“You took his _bike?_ ” Josh asked incredulously, appearing at the kitchen entrance. “Are you serious?”

“That other guy stole it first,” he rushed to justify, “and I only took it to get away. I ditched it far enough from here, they won’t trace it back to us, I promise.”

Josh clearly had more he wanted to say, but he pursed his lips and headed back into the kitchen without saying a word. He hated to admit that he was relieved he hadn’t.

Simon looked at Josh’s retreating back, then at Markus, and went after the black man. He lay a hand on his shoulder as he spoke softly to him. Markus strained to hear what they were saying, but their conversation was much calmer than what the previous one had been, and when they moved further out of sight, he couldn’t even hear their murmurs.

“Do you really think it was a mistake now?”

His eyes moved to a spot by the front door. North was perched on the foldable chair they had placed by the window to keep a lookout, one knee up to her chest. She had opened the blinds slightly and was looking at the lamp post doing a rather poor job illuminating the street outside.

His hold loosened on his makeshift cold pack. “The Institute is gone, North,” he sighed. “Killing Wesley might add a nail to the coffin, but the worst is gone.”

North’s eyes turned downcast. “We’re still alive,” she said, picking at loose threads on the rips of her jeans. “As long as we’re still here, it’ll never be gone.”

He didn’t know if he could take letting more people down tonight.

When Simon came back, he was holding one of the kitchen towels Markus had brought from home to reduce waste. The blond extended his hand towards him, and when Markus looked at him in confusion, he explained. “The peas shouldn’t make direct contact with your skin.”

Markus had known this, but he had had more important things to occupy his mind with when North had tossed him the frozen vegetables (one of the attempts made by Simon to minimize the amount of junk they ate, one that Markus had condoned with enthusiasm).

Out of all three, it was Simon he couldn’t even bring himself to look at. But he had to. His forgiveness might be the only thing that could loosen his guilt’s vice grip at his insides. When he gave him the cold package, he made an effort to look straight into those clear blue eyes. “Simon, I’m sorry,” he said, remorse dripping heavy from his voice. “I would _never_ do anything intentional to compromise your research. All those people need you to find a cure for them, I wouldn’t sabotage that for anything.”

A parting gift from the Institute. A way to remind them that they could never truly escape the people that treated them like playthings. What had been used to make them, faster, stronger, more resilient, a literal blessing to some, had turned into a curse after years out of their own worst hell. The wonder drug that was meant to make them _better_... and was now slowly killing them.

And Simon had figured it out. Clever, brilliant Simon, wasted as an intern in his lab, fighting against the clock, working away to save a handful of people who no one else would save.

And Markus had almost destroyed everything.

His friend gave a small nod. Even in that small room where he had met him properly for the first time, Simon had tried not to stand out as much as he could manage. He wrapped the peas up in the towel and offered them to Markus again. “I know. Emotions can be distracting.” His face contorted into a painful grimace. “And we’ve already been burned once.”

Markus couldn’t quite hide his wince. _Daniel_. He was talking about Daniel. The brother he had just gotten back after years of separation. The brother who had taken a bullet for the team to further Simon’s research and help the people who could die without it. Who had grown tired of seeing his brother getting nowhere. Who had been so invested in Simon’s success he had given in to irrational fears and paranoia. The defining reason why Markus had taken that rifle to Wesley’s house.

How could he have fucked up so much in one single night?

“I know this was a big risk,” he started, a little louder to make it clear he was addressing all of them. “And a big mistake. But when I made my choice, I couldn’t see what the consequences would be… and that’s my fault. All I could see was 64 kids watching the only life they had ever known burn to the ground. I could only think of all those cops and shrinks telling us that what we had gone through was in the past and then just expecting us to lead normal lives when we were released.” His eyes fell on his left hand, balled into a fist on his knee to contain the rage forever bubbling underneath his skin. “Children who had been _experimented_ on and trained to _kill_ since they could _talk._ And that was _their_ fault. Wesley’s and whoever else was running the Institute with him. And now with the thirium deterioration, and from that to Daniel-”

Simon took in a sharp breath. His eyes were glassier than before.

Markus chose to spare him some pain. “I guess the thought of sticking it to the man after all of this felt _good_. But I was wrong.”

“Because you got caught?” North asked bitterly from the chair by the window. Obviously she didn’t like being the odd man out.

“Because it wouldn’t get us anywhere,” he retorted. “Wesley dies, and then what?”

“Then one less monster is walking free in the streets!”

“Who was that other guy, anyway? A bodyguard?”

Markus’ gaze snapped to Josh. He was leaning against the kitchen door, arms crosses over his chest. A small semblance of relief washed over him. “I don’t think so.”

He told his friends everything that happened: how the guy had arrived and immediately started searching the office, how he had stayed almost unnaturally calm when Wesley came home, how Wesley had come into the office with a gun raised as if expecting someone to be there, how he had _relaxed_ and had a nice _chitchat_ with the intruder while a gun was pointed at him until Markus took his shot. Then, about the relentless pursuit the guy had given (and even the tech he had used to override the bike’s ignition), how he had made his rental bike crash, and how Markus had escaped his questioning and his grip by the skin of his teeth – which, considering the kind of training and chemical regimen he had received while under the thumb of the Institute, was unsettling to him.

“Did you get a good look at the guy?” asked Simon.

“No, he had a hood on. Brown eyes, that’s all I got.” He could admit that the amount of information he had was frustratingly low. How would he know what to look out for to keep him and his friends safe if the guy decided to come after him? He had wanted to take him somewhere; possibly to torture the name of an employer out of him if his enquiries were anything to go by.

“What about the rifle, could they get your prints off of it?” North asked.

Markus raised an eyebrow. “I had the gloves on, I am not an amateur.”

“You don’t want me to reply to that,” she bit back, but the barest hint of a smile on her lips set him at ease.

…until his eyes caught Simon, and the pensive look he had on his face.

“What are you thinking?” he prompted his friend.

Simon’s eyes snapped to him and he waved his hand dismissively. “Nothing, it’s not about the guy.”

“Judging by the look on your face, it seems important,” Markus pointed out.

The blond hugged his elbows in thought. “That guy searching Wesley’s files got me thinking. We know Wesley ran the Institute when we were part of it, you and North had seen him.” Markus nodded. “And now he is somehow running CyberLife. How can a man go from former head of an assassin syndicate and illegal experimentation hub to CEO of a multibillion dollar company specialising in artificial organs and medical technology?”

North seemed to catch on first. “You think CyberLife and the Institute are connected?”

Simon shrugged. “Maybe. And maybe not even that. Maybe he simply had the right information for the right people. Or _on_ the right people.”

“Blackmail,” Josh concluded.

“If I was him, I wouldn’t run such an operation without keeping excessive files. On everything: operations, procedures, protocols…” He looked at each of them meaningfully. “…assets.”

“You think he has files on _us?_ ” Josh asked incredulously. “Separate from the ones destroyed in the raid?”

“Someone must have had files on us, such an extensive experiment couldn’t be sustained on one log of files alone. Especially when said experiment was run by a man as controlling as Wesley. Imagine how easier this whole thing would be if we had a complete list of everyone who was part of the training program.”

Slowly, North rose from her chair, one arm raised. “Hold on a second, because it sounds to me like you are suggesting we _search Wesley’s files for a list._ ”

“The other guy was doing it, for whatever reason. But after tonight? No way,” Simon said, and Markus felt a tiny bit guiltier for wasting their chance. “But there might be another person who might know where to find such files. One we _know_ was on our side back then and who might be willing to help now.”

Silence fell again. This time, it was Markus that spoke, his eyebrows nearly buried in his faint hairline at the absurdity of his own conclusion. “Do you mean the _whistleblower?!_ ”

“Whistleblower? As in the guy that snitched on the Institute to the DPD?” North asked, nearly flabbergasted.

“Why not? They had to give the police _something_ to seem credible. Such valuable information you hang on to.”

“Simon, you’re grasping at straws here. You don’t even know if they-”

“Don’t you think I know that, Josh?!”

Even if his voice hadn’t risen that much in volume, the other three stared in shock at Simon’s outburst.

Desperation was written on every line on his face. “What do you think I’ve been doing ever since this whole thing started? How hard it was to get to even those first three people, to get to _you?_ To get to North, and then wait for her to get to Markus? This whole thing has been nothing but grasping at straws, and I _don’t_ want to wait and see how long it will take until we pull the short one.” His hands gripped the edge of the desk tightly behind him, so hard his knuckles turned white.

No one spoke after he fell silent. They had known this was pretty hard on the resident scientist, but hearing it come from _Simon_ , and in such an explosive manner, put everything to perspective.

Markus let the peas fall softly next to him on the sofa. “Okay,” he agreed softly, and Simon looked at him with wide eyes. “And how do we find them, then?” He eyed his friends for ideas, especially the two currently not coming down from an emotional outburst.

North had her eyes trained on Simon as she spoke. “How about the police report of the incident? Aren’t things like witnesses included in those?”

“Can you hack into the DPD mainframe?” Markus turned to Josh.

The tall man opened his mouth, then closed it in what seemed like exasperation. “Okay, contrary to popular belief, I cannot hack into everything, guys.”

“But can you hack into the DPD?”

Josh stared at him, then sighed. “Yeah, I can hack into the DPD. And I already did a few weeks back, and there’s no mention of a name. Just that there was an anonymous tip which, if you think about who we’re dealing with, could just be in the file to keep their name out of the permanent record.”

“And their ass alive,” North concluded, chin dropping on her knee.

“What if we just asked the officers who led the raid for their name?” Simon suggested in a small voice. At least he seemed calmer than before. “Say we wanted to thank them for what they did for us?”

“And they’re just gonna give us the name of a whistleblower who blew an illegal child exploitation ring wide open and who they went to great lengths to keep out of official reports?”

“North’s right, we could be looking to kill them for all they know,” Markus said, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Josh suddenly sat up straighter from where he was leaning against the door frame. His eyes were wide with the beginning of an idea. “But they don’t _actually_ have to give us the name.”

“Um…” Simon started, looking at him dubiously, “they… kind of… do?”

“No, think about it. If they left them out of the reports, then they might have helped them disappear. They might even keep in touch.”

All three stared blankly at him.

Josh’s brow furrowed. “What? No one paid attention to those surveillance classes they gave us? Or an actual spy movie?”

Markus was starting to catch up on what Josh had in mind. “Do we have anything that can help us pull that off?”

Josh shrugged a shoulder. “You have me. That’ll do.”


	3. Rapport

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor's debriefing is less than favourable. A run-in with the quartermaster is more than.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This. Chapter. Sucked. Out. My. Life. 
> 
> I fully blame this monstrosity of a sleeping schedule that I've made for myself and the unexpected reruns of two of my favourite TV shows at 1AM for how late this update is. 
> 
> This one is on the shorter side, and since the events that were supposed to be in it were separated into two chapters, the next one will probably be shorter too. But then we get to the truly juicy bits, so strap yourselves in, folks...
> 
> This story's playlist has been updated thanks to suggestions from my bestie :) If you have any suggestions for songs that could be included, feel free to hit me up with them!
> 
> P.S.: [This Discord server](https://discord.gg/57HWnTP) is the place to be. The Angst Train™ departs at any time of day, and this story has a whole channel dedicated to it, where you can get early snippets and progress reports and scream at me if I'm ever late again. Come join us!

That day Connor wasn’t sitting at Amanda’s couch. He was sitting in front of her desk.

It had been carefully chosen and decorated to blend in seamlessly with the aesthetic of the room. A spotless glass surface, silver sawhorse legs, a modern white boom arm lamp; next to the lamp, in an orderly line, a hexagonal terrarium, a marble fountain pen stand, a three-ball Newton’s cradle, and a small porcelain plate with three candles placed delicately in the centre. There was no personal computer in sight: only a thick leather journal, off-white and in pristine condition, set at the dead centre of the desk, aligned perfectly with the high-backed chair in which his handler currently sat, eyes trained on Connor’s mission report on an Institute-issued tablet.

Amanda wanted her work space and therapy area to be completely separate while still occupying the same room. And today was not a therapy day.

Eventually, the woman before him shook her head minutely. “It’s a pity you didn’t have a chance to go through Wesley’s physical files.” It was hard to ignore the disappointment evident in her tone. “Maybe you could have found something useful there.”

Connor lowered his gaze to his hands. He had expected her to comment on his gross oversight. “I didn’t factor in the possibility of the target returning to his home earlier upon finding the bullet,” he said, trying not to make his words sound like an excuse. “I should have made the time to look into his physical files more thoroughly.”

“Yes, you should have,” Amanda agreed thoughtfully, eyes focused on the screen, and his thoughts out of her mouth burnt more than the anger that had consumed him all night.

Connor had immediately composed his report upon returning to his apartment in an attempt to dissect his actions, having returned home to collect his thoughts after the Wesley op had been… _derailed_. After long hours of deliberation and the bare minimum amount of sleep, he had finally reconciled himself to the fact that the appearance of the sniper at Nathan Wesley’s house could not have been predicted, and therefore his failure to fully complete his mission was justifiable and not a reason for him to doubt his judgement and his work ethic.

Yet here, in the stiff white chair in front of Amanda’s desk, his reasoning was quickly coming apart. Because he was supposed to adapt to unpredictability. Maybe if he had done so last night, his handler’s lip wouldn’t be curled in disapproval, and the outcome of his mission wouldn’t be mocking him still.

Nathan Wesley had managed to crawl into his panic room and call 9-1-1 after he had left (not that Connor would have gone back to finish what he started without a plan). He had reported a break-in at his house, and that the distant sirens of a police car had scared the intruder away, who had apparently fled on Wesley’s motorcycle. Said motorcycle had been found five miles away, parked outside a scrapyard in a less savoury part of Detroit.

So now Nathan Wesley knew exactly what the Institute wanted from him and the sniper had slipped right out of Connor’s hands. Amanda’s earlier praise on acquiring all of his target’s digital files didn’t negate the fact that he had failed to anticipate all possible outcomes of his actions.

“Did IT find something in his digital files?” he asked.

“Unfortunately, no” Amanda replied, setting the tablet down. “It would appear that he has the list stored somewhere else.”

Connor’s fingers longed for his coin more than ever, but he forced himself to keep his hands on the arms of the chair. The feeling that his efforts were for naught was suddenly clawing at his throat. He should have scouted his target more thoroughly before moving in, to at least cover all his basics. A well-informed agent was a successful agent.

His mentor weaved her fingers together over the leather-bound journal and looked straight into his eyes. “Tell me, what did Wesley say when you confronted him?”

It was hard not to feel as if _his_ mind was being probed under her scrutinising gaze, but he couldn’t let his rampaging guilt get in the way of his work. And in the way of his own curiosity. “He seemed to think I was there to give him a scolding for his actions. He mentioned _you_ by name and…” he trailed off, trying to put his thoughts in order.

She raised an eyebrow at his hesitation. “And?” she prompted.

“And… seemed to know _me_ personally.”

Amanda’s expression didn’t waver, but something sharp rose in her eyes. “Anything in particular in his words that is troubling you?”

Did his discomfort really show on his face that much? “He assumed I was there to seek out revenge against him. That I was sent on this mission on purpose.”  

Elegant fingers came to rest on her chin thoughtfully as she searched his face, and he let her, baring all his puzzlement and unease for her to see. “You have something in particular to ask me,” she murmured. “Go ahead.”

This time he couldn’t help it: he rubbed the pads of his fingers together in nervousness. “Was Nathan Wesley part of Operation Blue Castle?”

He needed to know. There was nothing else in his _life_ he needed to know more at that moment. If Wesley had been part of the one dark stain in his record, one he didn’t even remember being part of, then he had every right to know, every right to _ask…_

Amanda’s eyes searched his face, and only his consuming need for answers kept him from squirming. Eventually, she dropped her hands back on the table. “All persons involved in Operation Blue Castle have been dealt with and the threat has been neutralised. Nathan Wesley had nothing to do with what happened on that mission.”

“He recognised my _voice_ ,” Connor insisted. “No one outside of the Institute would recognise me purely from the sound of my voice.”

“Then you’ll be pleased to know that it still remains so,” she assured him with a gentle smile. “Nathan Wesley was one of the Institute’s first benefactors. He would often visit the bunker for progress reports and training demonstrations, and sometimes offer lessons himself.”

Connor frowned. “I don’t remember him ever being in the Institute…”

“It was a long time ago, Connor, I am not surprised you don’t.” She opened the journal and found a filled spot in the middle with expert ease. “He was let go from our sponsor list recently and it was suspected he took something with him on his way out. That’s why you were assigned his case.”

“And why wasn’t this mentioned in his file?”

Amanda’s searching fingers stilled over the immaculate handwriting. Hard eyes found his face again. “His involvement was meant to be kept under wraps. Your adaptability was the reason I chose you specifically for this mission. Was I wrong to do so, Connor?”

He felt his back straighten imperceptibly. “Of course not. His familiarity was just… unexpected.”

His mentor gave him a sympathetic look, or as much as she allowed during a work setting. “Would you prefer if I moved our session to tomorrow instead of Friday?”

Someday, her concern for his emotional wellbeing would stop being touching. But today was not that day. “That won’t be necessary. I think it would be more beneficial if I sort through my thoughts on my own first.”

“If you think that would help you more, then who am I disagree?” She mercifully dropped her gaze back to her notes. “We will have to rethink our approach regarding Wesley. You will be notified of further plans of extraction in the future.”

“What about the sniper at his house?”

“What about them?”

One thing Connor had… neglected to mention in his mission report: how he had chased the shooter that had disrupted his mission and ultimately let him gain the upper hand and escape… or that he had even seen his face. He didn’t want to have to explain how he, supposedly one of the most experienced agents in the Institute’s roster, had been so easily neutralised. “They saw me at the target’s house, not to mention that they were targeting a former Institute associate, as you said. Shouldn’t we be looking for them? Bringing them in?”

“It is certainly… inconvenient that you were spotted, but hardly a matter to warrant a full investigation. We can’t engage agents for something so trivial.”

She was right, of course. As she often was. Even he didn’t know why he persisted. “ _I_ could look into it. It would not take away from my duties here or any future assignments.”

“Absolutely not,” she said in a tone that made it clear how absurd she found the notion. “You are my best agent, I cannot have you be preoccupied by irrelevant matters.”

“I feel like it’s my responsibility to find out who the shooter was, finish this mission properly. It really wouldn’t distract me from any future mission I might be assigned.”

For a moment, Amanda’s contemplative look gave him hope he had managed to convince her. He should have known better. “I know how attentive and meticulous you are with your missions, Connor. I wouldn’t want you to beat yourself up because you didn’t give this your full attention. The answer is still no, I’m afraid.”

Connor wanted to argue more, _fight_ more, but thought better of it a second later. He could recognise a lost cause when he saw one. And Amanda’s naked anger was more bone chilling than her quiet disappointment. “I understand,” he conceded, strategically ignoring the tenseness in his shoulders.  

“Good.” She took the tablet back in her hands to give his report another once over. “You have a training session with Group C in half an hour, yes?”

“I am to demonstrate disarming techniques, yes.”

“Then that will be all for now.”

He couldn’t get out of the room fast enough.

Connor’s body only grew tenser as he walked down the brightly lit corridor and into the elevator, and he heaved a frustrated breath the moment the doors slid shut. The soft rumbling of the car as it ascended to Level -3 did little to alleviate his nerves, and it must have shown on his face: the moment the doors opened again, a couple of recruits that had paused their sparring match to stake the new arrival frowned and hastily turned back to their task.

The training centre stretched out before him, a wide room littered with crash mats, punching dummies, racks of non-lethal weapons and anything else the recruits might require to cultivate their combat skills. In here, the concrete walls were bare, and an elevated walkway wrapped around the room, allowing for ease of spectating and access to the rest of the floor beyond without disturbing any fighting demonstrations on the floor. Dozens of recruits were already busy there, either sparring with each other under the watchful eyes of their instructors or simply watching the others do so, white jumpsuits in sharp contrast to the dark flooring and equipment.

Connor climbed the four steps up to the walkway and stalking to the far left side of the room, hands clutching the railing in a near white-knuckled grip. He couldn’t understand how Amanda could be so oblivious to the security risks not looking into the sniper could create. Someone had seen him at Wesley’s house, threatening the CEO of a multibillion dollar company. Said someone could report such a fact to the police, who could in turn look into the claim, and that was too much of a hassle if they ever wanted to get a shot at retrieving the list currently _still_ in Wesley’s possession.

_…but that’s not all, is it now, Connor?_

That traitorous part of his mind, the one that sounded just like Amanda, had to keep reminding him that no, this was _not_ solely a concern for the organisation’s integrity. Because it was hard not to take this as a personal failure. How could he have allowed someone to incapacitate him and escape from under him so easily? All his years of training, all his discipline and all his efficiency, they might as well amount to nothing now that he had allowed the sniper to play him like he had and make a run for it _with Connor’s own vehicle._ It was easy to feel bitter at this turn of events, not to say unworthy of any praise or recognition for everything else he had accomplished on that mission.

His eyes wandered over the recruits training below. To his left, one of the latest additions to Group C, Shane _–double homicide, apparent death by hanging at the Western Illinois Correctional Centre–_ , was practising his high kick on one of the dummies. Connor had noted his poor form during the last sparring session he had overseen, and it would seem the recruit was putting in the work as required.

What would all the recruits who were supposed to look up to him as a perfect example of an effective Institute agent think of his failure?

He really didn’t want to give in to that little voice, to listen to what he already knew but didn’t want to admit: his desire to find that man was more for himself than any dedication to the mission he might have.

Maybe then those bicoloured eyes would stop haunting him.

“RK800.”

Connor almost startled at the sound of the familiar voice, but nodded at the agent coming towards him. “KL900.”

Agent KL900, assigned name Lucy, was the Institute’s lead tech and resident quartermaster, and one of the few agents that had been with the Institute for nearly as long as he had. She was also one of the smartest people in the program (if not _the_ smartest), and Connor was certain Operations would collapse without her coordination. She had already been installed in her positions when he returned to active duty after Operation Blue Castle, and the program hadn’t been the same since. Not that Connor would know a lot about that.

Lucy came to stand by his side, nearly half a head shorter than him, though the dreads pulled in a bun at the top of her head almost cancelled out the difference. Her short-sleeved shirt exposed the irregular white patches of skin across her arms, matching those on her cheeks and forehead _-non-segmental vitiligo-_ , and her ever-present tablet was in her hands, as expected. “The hardware you signed in today is one ignition override chip short,” she said in her slow, almost raspy voice.

“I lost it,” he replied curtly, not even bothering to come up with a decent lie.

The quartermaster gave a languid nod. “I’ll add it to the list of three pistols you’ve also lost. And the rifle scope you damaged last week.”

Connor was in no mood to engage in conversation about his mission strategies. “Anything else I can help you with, agent?”

“Not at the moment. Do _you_ require my assistance, RK800?”

A few of the recruits had stopped their workout at the closest dummy and were looking at them curiously; or, more specifically, at Lucy’s exposed arms. Connor sent them a stern look, and the recruits scampered to occupy themselves with their training again. “No,” he replied, holding his gaze on them to make sure they weren’t still looking her way.

If Lucy was aware of what had transpired, she didn’t show it. “Very well. Good luck with your training class.” And she turned to leave him to his thoughts.

…except his thoughts took an unexpected turn at the offer. It would be a long shot, but he didn’t have anything to lose. “Now that you mention it…” he started, and Lucy paused in the middle of the walkway. “…I do have something I would like you to look up for me.”

Her chin turned towards him -not enough for her to watch him over her shoulder, but enough to show he had her attention. “Why can’t you look it up yourself?”

“Because I don’t want my authorization key to be tied to the inquiry. It’s case sensitive.”

Onyx eyes found his face. “Does that mean that all my equipment will be coming back and be in one piece from now on?”

His fingers twitched at his sides. “For the foreseeable future.”

Only _then_ did his fellow agent turn around, a pleasant smile on her face. “What can I do for you, Connor?”


	4. Best Laid Plans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is nothing wrong with some lawful crime. Markus' conscience will just have to accept that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: *roasting marshmallows over the burning drafts of chapters 3 & 4* oh hello didn't see you there
> 
> At last. I am free. This demon of a chapter can torment me no longer. We can finally move on to more juicy bits >:)
> 
> I am so sorry this chapter took so long to post, but it's been kicking my ass for two months now, and no one is more relieved to see it go up than I am. Good news though: once the ball was rolling, this turned into a fucking beast, so you are now getting the longest chapter in this story so far! 
> 
> But there was one important reason this took so long to get out. I've been brainstorming plots for this story this past month, and I have finally settled on a lot of the backstories and what's gonna be happening in the future. And that warranted some changes.
> 
>  
> 
> **The rating has now been raised to Explicit and the tags have been updated with all the relevant warnings. If any of these make you uncomfortable, this fic is not for you.**
> 
>  
> 
> Warnings will also be given in the notes of each chapter, but the most pressing ones are all in the tags. Please proceed with caution and take care of yourselves.

The car shuddered to a stop in the shadowy alley and Simon turned the ignition off. “Alright, we’re here,” he announced, studying the quiet neighbourhood through the windshield. It was eerily quiet; no one was walking up and down the street at this time of night. Something the quartet had banked on.

“What time is it?” North asked, adjusting her gloves in the front seat. It was barely pushed forward enough to leave room for Markus’ legs behind her, and that was after he had complained the backrest had been cutting off circulation to his feet.  

To Markus’ left, Josh ceased his anxious tapping on the booting laptop in his lap to check the screen of his electronic watch. “19:36.”

“Are we sure he’s coming home?”

“We’ve been scouting him for a week, North,” Simon sighed. “Barring any unexpected developments, he’s coming straight home.”

They had taken Simon’s father’s car for this… expedition; the wheelchair accessible van Markus used to get Carl to doctors’ appointments would have attracted too much attention in the quieter streets of the neighbourhood they were currently parked in. At least the windows were sufficiently tinted that they would hide Simon, the designated driver, and Josh, already typing away on his laptop, out of people’s view.

North shrugged. “I don’t want to have to do this twice, is all. We only have one shot at this.”

“You could have stayed home, then,” Markus pointed out, a cheeky smirk playing at his lips. “Simon and I could have pulled it off just fine.”

He could see her raise an eyebrow in the rear-view mirror. “Josh could have stayed home, too, but I’d need a bone saw to separate you two.”

Josh, for his part, did not look amused. “The bugs are short-distance. I had to be here.”

North scoffed. “Just say you’re here to babysit us, there’s no shame in it.”

“Why, do you need babysitting, North?”

Her eyes burned in the mirror as she looked at the hacker in the back seat. Eventually, she leaned forward to grab their supplies from her bag. “Fine, whatever you say, daddy.”

Josh sputtered, and Markus couldn’t hold back his snicker even with the hastily raised fist against his mouth. Simon had rested his forehead against the steering wheel, but Markus could still make out his strained lips in the artificial light of the streetlamp outside.

*

_Markus was attuned to people’s discomfort. He couldn’t help it anymore: ever since Mr Kamski had offered him a job as Carl Manfred’s caretaker, he had trained himself to pick up on any sign of uneasiness or pain, and it was now second nature to him._

_So he couldn’t stop his eyes from flickering to Josh every few seconds._

_He was hunched over his laptop at the desk in their hideout, deep in research for the plan they had tentatively started to put together, a frown etched deep between his eyebrows. Josh would bite the inside of his cheek when deep in thought over something or other on his screens, but he would never frown. And that frown would get just a little deeper every time his right hand would reach a little too far over the keyboard, followed by a moment when he would subtly rest his wrist on the desk._

_Markus could ask him about it, but he… wouldn’t._

_Alright, maybe he was too chicken to do it, but he couldn’t help it. He had wanted to talk to Josh about what happened at Wesley’s for the past two days, apologise, try to make things better, but he always found an excuse not to - and so did Josh, for that matter. Every time they would find themselves alone in the same room, they would both try and look as busy as possible to avoid even making small talk. Because small talk led to more serious subjects. And more serious subjects, in this case, led to Markus’ mistakes._

_And he didn’t think he could bear hearing the disappointment evident on Josh’s face made vocal, as well._

_But the awkwardness of their little dance prickled at his skin like a million tiny needles, and he wanted nothing more than to rip off that band-aid before they actually had to implement this plan._

_If only he could get off his ass any time soon._

_Luckily (or unluckily) for him, he hadn’t been the only one to notice Josh’s discomfort._

_Simon came from the kitchen, carrying a stiff, blue bundle of fabric in his hands. He tapped Josh on the shoulder with it, and the man startled out of whatever train of thought he had found himself in. A blond eyebrow quirked when he took the offered item without complaint. “That bad today, huh?”_

_Josh winced sheepishly. “You could say that,” he said as he secured the wrist brace in place._

_“Did you go in for those tests I suggested the other day?”_

_He flexed his fingers experimentally, not meeting their friend’s eye. “We had more important things to do,” he dismissed him, attention back on the screen._

_Simon’s features pinched. “Josh, I would like to know if-”_

_“It’s just carpal tunnel, Simon,” the older man nearly snapped, dark eyes finally on the man above him, “okay? Just leave it.”_

_Simon took a step back. He studied Josh through narrowed eyes, then shook his head with a huff and headed to the room he had claimed as a lab space, shutting the door behind him. The force almost rattled the frame._

_Markus couldn’t help the sympathetic wince. “He didn’t like that very much.”_

_Josh sent him a glare before getting back to work._

_Well, he got this far. He set down the gun he had been cleaning out (the only weapon he had managed to hold on to after the crash) and took a deep breath to steady his nerves. “Josh, can I talk to you?”_

_“What about?”_

_“The night at Wesley’s.”_

_“Save it.”_

_His mouth snapped closed. That… stung more than expected._

_“Alright, then,” he murmured, getting up to head to the kitchen – for a glass of water, for solitude, he wasn’t sure himself. He only knew that the silence in that room was pressing against him like an anvil, and he wanted out._

_“You tried to kill a man, Markus.”_

_Markus immediately turned. Josh’s fingers had stilled over the keyboard, but his eyes remained trained on the screen. “You literally took a shot at him,” his friend continued, a hint of disbelief in his tone._

_“I know,” Markus said, trying to contain the lightness in his chest. “And not a minute has passed since then that I don’t regret it.”_

_“Why did you even do it, then?” Josh demanded, finally looking at him. “Why take such a risk, why take someone’s life?”_

_Markus pursed his lips. “Because of Daniel.”_

_Josh closed his eyes and bowed his head. The grief was still fresh for all of them._

_“Everything else, too,” he went on, his voice quieter. “The kidnappings, the experiments, the imprisonment, the alleged rapes, but Daniel’s death… and what that did to Simon, I…” He paused, took a shaky breath to compose himself. “Someone had to pay for that. I realise it was a mistake now, but… In the moment, I couldn’t think about anything else.”_

_When his friend raised his head again, he could see the resignation in his eyes. “You know what’s harder to accept? That you and North didn’t tell us what you were doing. You went and got guns – where did you even find guns, anyway?”_

_“North has her contacts. I didn’t ask.”_

_If he hadn’t been looking at him, he would have missed the minute way Josh’s lip ticked upwards. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”_

_The reaction pulled a chuckle out of Markus. “Everyone should be.”_

_Josh’s smile grew a little bigger, and he pressed his lips together to will it away. “You tried to kill a man, that I will not forgive. But we are a team. We are supposed to be working together on this, decide on the best course of action based on facts, not emotions. People’s lives depend on us. We cannot afford to be reckless, especially now that someone has seen your face. From now on, we run everything by everyone, understood?”_

_“Understood,” he nodded eagerly. “I wasn’t planning on leaving you out of the loop ever again, anyway.”_

_Josh stared down at the wrist brace on his right hand, and offered him his left instead. “You’re still a punk, though.”_

_Markus laughed, grasping it firmly. “Be glad I never stop being one.”_

*

Josh scowled as he pressed down pointedly on his keyboard. “You’re all on thin fucking ice,” he grumbled, and even North couldn’t contain her giggles anymore. “Do you have everything?”

There was the sound of items shifting inside the bag. “Mics, Trojan, drugs, masks-” – Simon gave a shudder in the driver’s seat – “-anything in particular you want?”

“Turn on the mics for a bit, I wanna run a signal check again.”

North stood up sharply in her seat. “You didn’t do that before we left?!”

“I did, but I wanna do it again.”

She grumbled something under her breath, but there was a _click_ from the passenger seat, and Josh started typing straight after.

The next 5 minutes passed in relative silence. Everyone was focused on the road outside, waiting for a sign of their target returning home from work. Only one other person passed, but they didn’t pay much attention to the vehicle casually parked in the alley. Had they, they would have noticed the covered plates at the front (a precaution taken by Simon, in case, god forbid, their target spotted this vehicle).

Markus was in the middle of checking over the suppressors on their guns (just for intimidation and by no means for actual use) when Simon spoke. “Guys.”

Everyone’s attention snapped to the man walking across the street.

He was heavyset, with grey hair and an equally grey moustache, carrying a bag of groceries in his arms. Despite the late night chill having died down in recent days, the man was bundled up tight, his leather jacket zipped up to his chin. The street light caught on a small hoop earring on the man’s left ear, a detail Markus remembered vividly after fixating on it for days as a viable point to pull and rip out in a possible escape attempt. It had never come to that, but his mind hadn’t stopped calculating strategies and likely outcomes for months. He was pleasantly surprised that the man had kept it after all those years.

All four of them exchanged a look. Their target was here.   

*

_“Okay, who were the leading officers on the case?” Markus was pacing thoughtfully up and down the sitting area of their hideout, arms crossed over his chest. The gnarly bruise on his side hurt less when he did so._

_There was some clicking of keys on a keyboard behind him. “Detectives Hank Anderson and Ben Collins,” Josh replied. He was sat at the desk, Simon munching on some chips next to him, his feet up on the grey surface. He kept eyeing the blond’s shoes and their proximity to his laptop out of the corner of his eye. “52 and 48, respectively. Anderson’s been promoted to the rank of Lieutenant since then.”_

_“Good police?”_

_North gave a scoff from the sofa, where she had sprawled like a cat the moment she had arrived. Her work bag was still on the chair by the door where she had carefully placed it on her way in. “Does that even exist?”_

_“You don’t visit a bunch of kids you don’t even know every day after rescuing them if you don’t care,” Markus pointed out, fixing her with a look._

_“If they’re so good, as you say, why not just ask them to tell us who snitched on the assholes?” she challenged._

_“Because they won’t,” Simon said around a chip. He swallowed before continuing. “This person was clearly scared of them if the police decided to keep their name out of the case file. Probably of Wesley, since he’s still out and kicking. This is our only chance.”_

_“So which one of them are we hitting, then?” Josh asked._

_“We’ll need time alone at their home and no distractions afterwards,” Markus explained. “What’s their family situation like?”_

_Josh typed in something. “Both are divorced…” he started, clicking through the information. He gave a sympathetic wince. “Only Collins has a living child, but she’s not staying with him.”_

_The implication was not lost on Markus. He allowed a twinge of sympathy for the lieutenant. “Alright then, do they have records? Any soft spots we can exploit?”_

_Another click, and Josh’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “Whoa. Anderson’s disciplinary record is longer than freaking Days of Our Lives.”_

_“What for?”_

_As Josh scrolled, Simon’s eyes grew increasingly wider, and the hacker’s eyebrows climbed impossibly higher. “Altercations with officers, suspects, witnesses, what the hell… um, coming in late, back-talking to superiors, showing up at crime scenes drunk, wow… That guy has no chill…”_

_Markus rubbed at his stubble in thought. “We could use some of that to our advantage…”_

_“Are you kidding me?” North cut in, swinging her legs over the side of the sofa to sit up properly. “That guy’s not gonna give two shits about what we’re gonna do to him. Also, wasn’t Anderson built like a fucking truck?”_

_“…he was the taller of the two, why?”_

_The smile she gave was more sarcasm than mirth. “Have fun manoeuvring that dead weight on your own.”_

_Markus rolled his eyes. “As if you couldn’t have handled it.”_

_North just shook her head at him. “What about Collins? He looked like a teddy bear compared to the other guy.”_

_Simon raised an eyebrow at her description, but Josh just went along with it. Markus had a sneaking suspicion he was about done with all of them. “Ah… Collins seems to be a quiet guy, minds his business, doesn’t seem inclined to move up the career ladder, handles quieter cases in general…”_

_“He’s probably our best bet, then,” Simon said through a mouthful of chips, rocking forward to look at the screen more closely. “Will be easier to rattle than-hey!”_

_Josh had plucked the chips straight out of the blond’s hands and thrown the crinkly package on the floor. “No eating near the laptops.”_

*

On the inside of the car, there was a flurry of motion.

“That was early,” North commented as she handed Markus his Scream mask over the back of the seat.

“Still within the expected margin, though,” Simon pointed out, staring at his watch.

Markus gave her one of the guns, grip first. “How much time?”

“Twenty seven minutes, twenty seconds and counting,” the blond replied, “you better get a move on. First call goes in twenty minutes.”

The mask was stuffed inside his jacket, along with the gun, and Markus pulled his beanie lower over his brow. His eyes locked with North’s in the rear-view mirror. “Ready?”

“Go.”

Both exited the vehicle at the same time. Markus offered his arm to North, and she slipped her arm through his, and together they started down the street. They kept their heads bowed close together, looking to all the world like a young couple taking a stroll through the night (and concealing their faces from view). No one bothered them on their way to the single-storey house at the end of the street, just as they knew no one would; Markus’ surveillance had been too thorough to allow that.

North pulled him to a stop in a darker part of the street and pulled her own mask, identical to his own, out of her jacket. “Suit up,” she said with a teasing smirk before her face disappeared behind white plastic and black cloth.

Privately, as she walked to the house on her own, he thought he should be given an award for biting back all the comments burning at the tip of his tongue about the bloody thing.

When he caught up to her, his own face now concealed and his eyesight minimally impeded, she was already at the door. The grotesque face in front of him tilted cockily to the side before his companion knocked on the door.

North’s posture was loose, casual, but Markus could see the almost imperceptible tension in her shoulders. A snake ready to strike. He looked down at her left hand, where a hypodermic needle was clutched between her fingers.

*

_Simon unzipped his backpack and produced a black box from within, similar to but wider than a reading glasses case. He opened it to show the contents to Markus and North. “Two hypodermic needles, 5ml of ketamine each. Pretty basic, pretty effective, yada yada, you know the story.” He took one of them out, holding it up to the light: it was smaller than then syringes Markus would sometimes use to administer Carl’s medicine, but they carried a smaller dosage anyway. “Intramuscular, so if you don’t hit a vein, that’s fine, it’ll do the job anyway.” And he offered it to them, plunger first._

_Markus went to take it, but North’s hand flew out and closed around the needle first. He caught her wrist before she could retreat. “What are you doing?”_

_“What does it look like I’m doing?” North asked in confusion._

_“_ I _am doing the hit, not you.”_

_“And why is that?”_

_“Because I have more training than you do,” he said plainly._

_“But I’m faster.”_

_“I was in the elite unit.”_

_“It’s a fucking policeman, Markus, not John Wick,” she deadpanned and yanked at her wrist._

_But his grip didn’t relent. “I’ve kept up with training.”_

_“So have I, dumbass.”_

_If he scrambled in his head for a reply, he was the only one who knew it. “…I’m older.”_

_North scoffed. “That hasn’t worked in 15 years, try again.”_

_Markus sighed impatiently. “Why do you need to do this?”_

_“Why do_ you? _”_

_“North…” he warned._

_“If you don’t let me do this, I’m gonna slash your tires.”_

_“I think you’ll need something more-”_

_“-and scratch the fuel tank.”_

_Markus felt all colour leave his face. “You wouldn’t.”_

_One corner of her lips tipped upwards. She cocked a well-shaped eyebrow. “Try me.”_

_Out of the corner of his eye, Simon pinched his lips together so hard his cheeks inflated and walked off towards the kitchen. Markus could not have felt more betrayed._

_Mismatched eyes stared into brown, but he eventually released her wrist. “Fine, you’re faster anyway.”_

*

The door swung open, and Detective Collins barely had time to open his mouth: North struck out and landed a hit straight to his throat to paralyze his larynx.

They couldn’t afford to let him scream.

Collins keeled over with a strangled wheeze, trying to get in as much air as possible, but North grabbed him by the collar and jabbed him with the needle on the side of his neck. She kept a hold of him as she walked him back into the house, and Markus closed the door behind them.

“Breathe, detective, there you go” she instructed, guiding him on the nearest sofa and dropping him on the cushions. She settled down next to him with an arm around his shoulders. “You’re only gonna take a little nap.”

By the time Collins could make coherent sounds again, the ketamine had started to take effect, and it was as freaky as Simon had implied during Markus’ demonstration to North: while the rest of his body had slowly gone limp, the detective’s eyes had stayed wide open, twitching ever so often. North waved a hand in front of his face, gave him a few light slaps on the cheek, but he truly seemed to be out of it. “Tie him up, I’ll get started on the house,” she said.

Markus wasted no time tearing that goddamn mask off and tossing it on the coffee table.

“What are you doing?” North hissed incredulously.

“I can’t see well out of it,” he lied. Well, somewhat lied.

“Bullshit, I can see fine.”

Busted. “Alright, _fine_ , I hate it.”

“Then why didn’t you choose something else, then?” she exclaimed.

“Because all the other choices were _so_ much better.”

“I didn’t know to hold a beauty contest for masks that could cover your eyes, dumbass.”

*

_The sound of the door opening was accompanied by a lot of rustling. “How are y’all doing tonight?”_

_Markus lifted his head from Plato’s_ Republic _… and stared at the gigantic garbage bag North was lugging behind her. “…what is that?”_

_North threw her work bag at its usual spot on the chair. “Masks,” she replied._

_“…you said you’d bring over ‘a few options’,” he helpfully pointed out, dread curling in his stomach._

_“Yes.” She raised the bag higher, as if to demonstrate how light it was. “These are a few options.”_

_“These don’t look like a few,” Josh said, eyeing the bag apprehensively from behind his laptop._

_“Don’t believe me? Here.” North tipped the bag over, and Josh scrambled to rescue his laptop from the cascade of plastic and synthetic hair that soon engulfed the desk. She opened her arms wide, gesturing to the newly-made pile. “A few.”_

_Markus grabbed the blonde wig closest to his hand, and almost dropped it when he realised it was attached to a frankly terrifying clown face. “Where did you even_ get _all these?”_

_“Most of them are from Electro Velvet down the street,” she explained as she took a police hat off the pile to examine. “We didn’t have a lot of stuff in terms of face coverage at the club, so the guys let me borrow some of their stuff.”_

_Josh picked up a Scream mask gingerly. “What kind of shows do these guys put on, exactly?” he asked._

_North put on the hat and looked at him from under the brim. “Wouldn’t_ you _like to know.”_

*

“That sounds like a great idea, now that you mention it.”

North huffed and angrily pulled hers off to set the full force of her chocolate brown eyes on him. “You know, if I knew that you would be whining so much, I would have left _you_ at home.”

Markus pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look, I’ll put it back on before he comes to, alright? Ten minutes.”

His friend stared at him. Then, she lowered the mask over her face again. “You’re weak. The mask is cool as hell.” She pushed two of the bugs Josh had purchased in his hands. “Twenty-five minutes,” she reminded him. He didn’t need reminding. “I’ll start on his phone.”

Their plan was simple. Pretend they knew all about the Institute, ask about the children and who gave the operation up to the police, look threatening and like they mean business without actually causing bodily harm, and scurry out when Simon called to “warn” them. Rattle Detective Collins enough to reach out to whoever had betrayed the Institute’s trust. Use a Trojan installed on his phone and computer to track his movements and catch any form of communication as it happened. Place bugs around his house to throw investigators off the scent.

As North patted down the officer’s jacket, Markus studied the small devices in his palm. A small part of him, pulsing and traitorous, was acutely aware of how calm and focused his mind was, doing what it had been conditioned to do. How balanced.

How content.

He closed his fist over the mics. “Let’s get to work, then.”

/0\

Half an hour later would find Markus and North walking down one of the busier parts of Greektown, her arm curled around his elbow as they mingled with the crowd in the small square. Cafés and restaurants lined their side of the plaza, all with varying amounts of people chatting and socialising inside. A little kid was splashing her hands inside the fountain, while her parents paid no mind to the water sipping into their coats as they talked.

“I’m just saying, you didn’t have to call him a pig,” Markus was saying, taking another bite of the hot dog he had ordered at a stall three blocks down. His companion hadn’t ordered anything: her shift would start in two hours.

“I wanted to.” The neon lights of the stores caught on North’s face, giving her half-smile a sinister glow. Markus had the sudden urge to paint it. “It was in character.”

“In character for an Institute agent? Weren’t we supposed to remain impartial towards targets?”

“Well, the Institute can suck my dick. I do what I want.”

Markus chuckled at the answer. “For the record,” he started, wiping his mouth and tossing the napkin in the trash, “I want to burn that mask.”

“You can’t,” North said, “it was borrowed.”

The familiarity of the whole scene was grounding Markus, and he couldn’t help but grasp on to it with all he had. The adrenaline high of the interrogation and the getaway bike ride was starting to dissipate, leaving his fingers tingling and his mind almost reeling, searching for a piece that was slipping away into the darkest corners of his subconscious. The piece that had kept his hand steady as he held the gun to the detective’s head, that had kept his stress level as Collins begged them to let him go. The piece that had begged to click into place that night as he stared at the back of Nathan Wesley’s head through the rifle’s scope and pulled the trigger.

But this place, the banter with North… this helped him come back to his senses again. There was the bus stop he got off at every time he had business in the square. There was the CyberLife store in the corner, bathing the pavement a rich blue Markus had used in many a painting under Carl’s watchful eye. There was that busker by the fountain that he had offered to play with at some point in the future. There was the sign above Bellini Paints, black letters backlit by white light, and Markus had the urge to go to the store right now, let the shelves upon shelves of colour fill his vision, let the smell of paint and old wood invade his nostrils and ground his self back into reality.

This was the life he had built for himself. This was who he is.

This was who he wanted to be.

And yet a sense of loss still hovered at the back of his mind.

At last they arrived at a small 24-hour café called Molly’s, tucked away in one of the side streets right off the plaza. North hadn’t liked the place when they had visited it on their second meeting, but Markus enjoyed the music playing low from the overhead speakers and the light streaming in through the windows in the late afternoon. Plus, the tea was excellent.

Not a lot of people were sitting inside, so it was easy to spot Josh and Simon sitting in one of the booths at the far back of the establishment, facing the windows. Simon waved at them as they made a beeline for their table.

“How were we?” North asked before they had even properly sat down.

“Convincing,” Simon offered. “The pig was a nice touch.”

“Ha! Suck it, Markus.”

Markus rolled his eyes. “Alright, fine, it worked,” he conceded. “Did we get anything out of it?”

“More than enough,” Josh replied with a grin. He handed both of them a set of wireless earbuds. “The minute you left, he called Anderson on his cell. I recorded the call – nice job with the Trojan, North.”

North preened next to him in the booth. “I seem to be getting all the praise, Markus. You need to up your game next time.”

“Hopefully there won’t _be_ a next time,” Josh fixed her with a look. “This was supposed to be a one-off. We cannot keep acting outside the law if we want the research to be credible. From now on, everything has to be legal.”

“Says the man who cons corporate assholes out of their money on the regular,” she deadpanned.

“ _North,_ ” Markus warned as Simon cast a wary glance around the quiet café over the back of their booth.

Josh narrowed his eyes at her. “That’s funny. ‘Cause I recall you have a habit of beating people close to death on the regular.”

“What I do is none of your business, you-”

“Hey!” She would have lunged over the table to throttle Josh’s throat hadn’t Markus thrown a hand over her chest to keep her seated.

“Stop it, both of you, now!” Simon hissed sternly. His hands had flown to Josh’s shoulders as a precaution. “There won’t be a need for it again and that’s that. Play the call, Josh.”

Josh stared North down some more before shaking Simon’s hands off forcefully. He hit play on the audio file more aggressively than necessary.

The call began with an unfamiliar gruff voice. “ _Whatcha want, Ben? I’m busy._ ”

“ _Hank, drop everything and come to my house right now,_ ” Collins said frantically. His voice was still strained. “ _The Institute just attacked me._ ”

“ _What?_ ” Lieutenant Anderson sounded more than confused. He also sounded way wearier than what Markus remembered from his teen years. He guessed life did that to a cop.

“ _Two people just broke into my house, drugged me, tied me to a chair and started asking me questions. They just left, I couldn’t catch up with them._ ”

There was the soft drone of some sort of sports game in the background of the call, but Anderson shifted and the noise died down. “ _You sure ya haven’t been drinking my coffee, Ben? Easy enough mistake to make._ ”

“ _Cut the crap, Hank, I’m being serious! Why would I be making all this up now?!_ ”

There was a long pause on the other line, and then the sound of wood scraping against the floor. “ _Are you okay? Are you hurt?_ ”

“ _Nah, I’m fine, I’m fine,_ ” the detective dismissed him breathlessly. He must had made to follow after them. “ _Hank, they knew everything. They kept asking about the thirium kids, about the Institute, about who blabbed to the cops-_ ”

“ _And you’re sure it was them?_ ”

“ _Would I be pulling your leg about this, Hank?!_ ”

A door opened and the sports game gave way to cars driving by: the lieutenant was outside. “ _Did they tell you what they wanted?_ ”

“ _In no uncertain terms,_ ” Collins winced. Markus looked at North out of the corner of his eye and she shrugged: nothing she could do about the sore throat he would have for a few days. “ _They’re looking for Lang._ ”

Markus looked at Josh and Simon in surprise. Simon just grinned at him.

“ _Lang?!_ ” Anderson asked in surprise. “ _They asked for him specifically?_ ”

“ _No. But they kept-asking about who told us, how we knew so much about the facility, the operation, the bosses… They don’t know who, but they’re asking._ ”

“ _After sixteen years?!_ ” A car door opened, then closed. “ _What got their panties in a twist all of a sudden?_ ”

“ _I don’t know, Hank, I don’t…_ ” Collins sounded at a loss. The now familiar sense of guilt reared its head in Markus’ chest. “ _Just… get over here, I don’t… Jesus…_ ”

“ _…Ben? You with me?_ ”

“ _…huh? Yeah, yeah, I’m here…_ ”

“ _Do you still have Lang’s number?_ ”

There was a pause on Collins’ end. “ _…uh, yeah, yeah, I have it._ ”

“ _Call Lang,_ ” instructed Anderson amidst the jiggling of keys, “ _tell him to get the hell out of dodge wherever he is, then call this in. I’m on my way now._ ”

“ _Hank?_ ”

“ _Yeah?_ ” The jiggling stopped.

“ _I know this isn’t easy for you, dealing with this shit again, but… thanks._ ”

The lieutenant took a while to speak again. “ _Yeah, don’t mention it,_ ” he grumbled before hanging up.

“Do we know who this Lang guy is?” North asked as she removed her earbuds.

“We have more than that,” Simon replied in glee. “Collins called him right after he hang up with Anderson. The number he called was _registered_. To one Jason Elliot, a doctor working at a fertility clinic in Port Huron.”

“Port Huron?” Markus echoed incredulously. “That’s a one and a half hour drive from here!”

Josh nodded, swiping at the screen. “I ran a search for any Dr Langs in that field working out of Detroit around the time the program was active and got a hit.” He turned his tablet towards them. “Dr Seymour Lang, embryologist, born 1978.”

The screen showed a man in his 40s, with a receding hairline and round glasses. His expression reminded Markus of that of a deer caught in headlights.

An unpleasant feeling settled in Markus’ stomach. “I never saw him around, did you?” he asked his friends. Everyone shook their heads.

“He participated in a number of government-funded research projects until he fell completely off the grid in 2022, right before the raid,” Josh explained and shrugged. “I guess snitching on child traffickers is a valid reason to disappear.”

“And he’s been hiding right under their nose all this time?” North mused, an impressed look on her face.

“So it would seem,” Simon offered. “But now _we_ know. And he is on high alert, so we’ll have to move quickly before he disappears again.”

Simon was right. And they knew it before they started this, too. But as they discussed their plan of approach, the unpleasant feeling curling in Markus’ stomach wouldn’t stop nagging him.

There had never been any babies or expectant mothers in the program. The Institute only worked with young children.

So why did they need an embryologist?

/0\

An email notification pinged at the corner of the screen.

Connor startled at the sudden noise. He looked down at the digital clock on his laptop: 23:04. He looked between the glowing white letters and the surveillance footage he had been examining and released a self-deprecating sigh: he had been staring at five minutes of video footage for the past three hours.

Lucy had run the plate number from the sniper’s bike at his request and traced it back to a rent-a-bike establishment in Ferndale. It had been rented by one Christopher Brynes using cash, but a run of the driver’s license used for the transaction easily revealed a case of identity theft. Christopher Brynes, a white man in his 30s, had reported his license stolen two weeks ago, right before the hit on Wesley.

The footage playing before him was pulled from the establishment, courtesy of Lucy. It showed the entirety of the transaction taking place, from the sniper walking in to him walking back out. His stride was measured, dynamic, assured. Body measuring software put his height at 1.87m, only slightly taller than Connor, but facial recognition software couldn’t detect his face past the neck scarf he wore, identical to the one he wore that night at Wesley’s house.

Connor had half a thought to ask Lucy for more footage, what outdoor cameras might have picked up before or after he exited the establishment, but he had to restrain himself. He wasn’t even supposed to be looking into this. Lucy had people she reported to, as well. Inquires not attached to specific missions could raise flags, and too many of them could hinder his investigation.

He checked the email that had just come through. It was from HQ. He had a new assignment and was expected to report to the bunker as soon as possible.

A lot of restraint was required to keep Connor from squirming guiltily in his seat. He closed the email as if that would keep Amanda from seeing the contents of his laptop.

His handler had told him not to pursue this, but his gut told him otherwise. He had to make sure the Institute remained under the radar and all its members were protected. If his investigation was fruitless or turned out to be for nothing, he would not report it to Amanda. But if he did discover a possible threat to the Institute, then he wouldn’t lose a lick of sleep over disobeying a direct order. He would have done whatever it took to protect their interests, and that went above any order he would ever receive.

At least, that’s how he was justifying his actions to himself.  

Connor fast-forwarded the video and froze on the man’s exit. The camera was mounted just above the door, so it was the only time the man’s face was properly in view. Even in the grainy feed, he could see the determination shining through his half-obscured face.

“Why would you go after him?” Connor mumbled in the silence of his apartment.

The feed, disappointingly, gave him no answer.


	5. The Whistleblower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor gets a peculiar update. Markus has a fateful meeting with the man who set them free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello lovelies! This chapter turned even longer than the last (how did I even manage that, I swear it wasn't intentional) XD More information-heavy than the rest, but important to get to all the fun in the next chapter :3c
> 
> Special shout-out to Minty and Kat for their invaluable help with the last scene, I cannot thank them enough for making it as realistic as possible!!! <3333
> 
> And I'm not even sorry for the ending.

Connor couldn’t remember the first time he fired a gun.

He remembered the assembly and disassembly drills in the bunker, way before he was allowed to even stand in front of a target. An exercise to allow him to familiarise himself with the weight of a weapon, the parts of a weapon, the proper method to care for a weapon… He had learnt to pull a gun apart and put it back together again blindfolded before he was even allowed to rest his finger against the trigger. Muscle memory, Amanda had explained back then, was an agent’s greatest weapon, far more than the weapon itself.

Only after returning from Operation Blue Castle could Connor finally agree with the sentiment. He had been rusty in most other areas of his training, but his hands still knew how to pull the slide off the main frame and render the gun completely inoperable in under 8 seconds.  

Nearly ten years later, Connor could tell the difference between a loaded and an unloaded gun by weight alone.

The armoury of the Institute was home to any kind of gun a person could imagine. It stockpiled all weapons and ammunition that an agent could have use for, and housed a Research & Development department that produced mods for specific purposes or conceived by technicians or the quartermaster herself for use by all agents. Racks and drawers full of weapons stood behind electronically sealed glass doors, to keep track of who accessed the armoury at any given moment. The Institute thrived at keeping meticulous records.

The Smith & Wesson Bodyguard revolver from their collection he was examining could fire five .38 calibre bullets, was hammerless and almost fit into the palm of his hand. A fitting choice for anyone wishing to conceal-and-carry, and one of the most common models in circulation purchased for that purpose. He tested the weight in his hand, adjusted his hold on the grip, looked down the length of the barrel, but there wasn’t much else to check in relation to the purpose he needed it for.

“This one,” he declared, setting it carefully back on the table among the rest of the candidates.

Lucy took the revolver and ran a thumb over the barrel. “I’ll set up a paper trail.”

“As soon as possible,” Connor implored, studying the rest of the revolvers on display. “This op is time sensitive. I leave in an hour.”

The quartermaster hummed thoughtfully. With the touch of a button, the sleek black tabletop slid back into place, hiding the gun display from view. “Why not choose something that can fire more bullets?” she asked as she placed the gun in a plastic bag.

“A person wishing to commit suicide only needs the one.”

“I see.” She tagged the bag with the op number and his ID. “Must be a relief not to have to return a gun for once.”

He fought the urge to check the cameras mounted on the corners of the room. “I plan to uphold my end of the bargain, KL900,” he muttered, mindful to keep his head lowered to obscure his lips from view.

“I’m glad. Because the excess bullets will have to be logged in upon completion.”

“I’m aware of standard procedure, agent,” Connor said tersely, fixing her with a sharp look.

Lucy only stared calmly back at him. He had half a mind to feel guilty for his behaviour. He wasn’t mad at her. Not really. “I take it my assistance wasn’t helpful, then?”

He thought back to the hours he had stood in front of a screen the previous night, and he braced his hands on the tabletop. “Not as much as I’d have liked.”

“Not for any error on my part, I assume. I gave you all you asked for.”

“Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough.”

She regarded him thoughtfully. “I could look for more footage, if you’d like,” she offered.

“Not right now,” he said, shaking his head. “It doesn’t take priority over the assignment.”

KL900 absentmindedly smoothed the edges of the plastic bag down. “Speaking of assignments, I thought you would like to know that there is an update on the Wesley case.”

 _That_ piqued his interest. “What sort of update?”

“With Wesley’s status as a former government employee, it was deemed necessary for the FBI to open an investigation into the shooting at Palmer Woods.”

“FBI?” Connor echoed, brow furrowing. His involvement in the Institute wouldn’t prompt such a level of scrutiny without probable cause. “Did Operations authorise this?”

“This wasn’t an internal order. At least, not as far as I know. But most op details pass through my terminal, and nothing of that nature has come through.” She clasped her hands in front of her. “It is interesting to note, however, that Nathan Wesley is a close associate of the lead agent on the case, Richard Perkins.”

“You think he asked Agent Perkins to look into the attempt on his life?”

“It’s a possibility.”

His fingers had started tapping a subtle rhythm against the tabletop. An FBI investigation would certainly complicate things - should they find the shooter first, that is. He didn’t know how much the agents assigned to the case were privy too, or how much Wesley had told them, but a person who could place him at the scene of a crime could bring unwanted attention to their unit and the nature of its operations. “Have they examined the rifle left at the scene?”

Lucy raised an eyebrow. “Are you suggesting I hack into FBI case files for information, RK800?”

“In our organisation’s interest, of course.” Connor offered her a pointed look. “You wouldn’t be as efficient if you didn’t examine all active law enforcement cases concerning active ops.”

The eyebrow remained raised, but the quartermaster’s expression stayed as impassive as ever. “They have. It was a DMR stolen from a shipment of military weapons on their way to be decommissioned. The agent-in-charge is making good progress in tracking down the people behind the theft.”

“…have we made better progress?”

KL900’s face turned stern. “My job is not to do the FBI’s work for them. If any progress is made on their part, I will inform you as soon as possible.”

As much as it irritated him in this particular instance, Lucy was right. This unit was not meant to assist law enforcement. It was meant to take action when law enforcement couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. “Amanda has been informed, I assume.”

“I found it pertinent to inform you first.”

Connor blinked in confusion. “Why?”

A small smile bloomed on Lucy’s face. “You seem more focused when you have all the facts of a case. Updates are the least I can give you to ease your mind.”

There was a strange mixture of emotions in his chest: perplexity at her action, alarm at having been read so easily. Gratitude. “…thank you, Lucy,” he finally said, because he couldn’t think of anything else.

The quartermaster nodded in acknowledgement. “Should a cleaner be on standby for the current op? AX400 is debriefing as we speak.”

Right. The current assignment. Which he was meant to be working on _exclusively_. “It shouldn’t be necessary. If I need someone, I’ll brief them on the way.”

“I’ll just get this ready for you, then.” And bag in hand, she walked out of the door leading to the forensic labs.

Connor took out the quarter he always kept in his jacket pocket and tossed it between his hands in thought. If the FBI located him first, Connor’s chances of the shooter revealing someone else had been aiming a gun at Wesley before him increased. And that was barring the chance of Wesley violating any confidentiality agreement he had struck once he was let go and revealing Connor’s presence himself. And even though Connor’s chances of facing charges were non-existent either way, the shooter’s possible confession would reach his superiors. It would reach Amanda.

And he had lied to Amanda.

But he had to restrain himself before those thoughts got the better of him.

After this assignment was over. He was going to find him before the FBI did.

Plug the hole once and for all.

/0\

The little house was not that impressive from the outside. It was a single storey building, in one of the less affluent parts of Port Huron, where houses were few and far between. Despite that, it seemed well maintained and cared for, with freshly coloured walls and a small flower garden just past the metal fence circling the plot. A perfectly isolated spot to lead a life of quiet obscurity. And, according to Josh’s research, the place one man going by the name of Jason Elliot had registered as his last known address.

They had decided it would be best if only one of them went to meet with the doctor: any more, and the already agitated man might make a run for it. North had voluntarily stepped back from the responsibility – fighting might be her forte, but having a diplomatic conversation with someone who had worked for the Institute was not something she had any interest in doing. Josh was overseeing a class at the university, and Simon would be caught up with work at the lab all day, which only left one candidate.

Markus pulled his fleece-lined jacket closer to his chest against the chilly afternoon wind. May was almost halfway gone and the cold weather would still not completely let up. The wind whistled through the leaves of the trees, the clinking of a wind chime carried on its back from somewhere in the neighbourhood, and he had a hard time not closing his eyes and letting the sound wash over him. If it had been any other day, he would have wanted to capture the moment, save it for later to bring to life on canvas, argue over the most fitting shades with his father while he painted…

But this was not any other day.

Taking a deep breath, Markus pushed the low gate open, the hinges creaking with the movement and making him wince. Judging by the manual car parked up front, the occupant of the house was most probably inside, and the noise would have alerted them to a visitor.

He hoped that wouldn’t send him running.

He briskly walked up to the porch, catching sight of a delicate wind chime hanging by the door, metal rods and coloured glass swaying in the wind. It looked handmade, something you would find at an outdoor market or a little corner shop, and it clinked melodically as the wind disturbed it again.

Like the sound of a knife clattering to a pristine white floor.

Markus tore his eyes away from it and the image in his head. He shifted his weight from his left leg to his right, his skin hyperaware of every place the knife stashed in his boot touched. Just for emergencies.

With a deep breath, he knocked gently on the door.

Rustling came from inside the house, and the sound of footsteps growing nearer. The person beyond paused, and a barely audible gasp came from the other side of the door.

Markus swallowed down his nerves. He had to be delicate about this. “Dr Elliot?” he called, which earned him another miniscule gasp, but the man on the other side remained otherwise silent. “Dr Elliot, I know you’re in there. I hate to come here unannounced, but I really need to talk to you.”

No response.

“My name is Markus?” he tried again. “Sixteen years ago, someone gave a tip to the police and… changed a lot of lives. And I think I know who that someone was. And I think you do, too.”

Still, no response.

Markus rested a hand against the doorframe. “Listen, you obviously don’t want to be associated with everything that happened sixteen years ago, and I understand that, believe me. You wouldn’t be out here if you wanted to be found. But I really need to talk to you about what happened. There’s no one else that can help.” He held his breath for any sound, any sign of movement from beyond the door.

But there was nothing.

Markus sighed. He rested his forehead against the back of his hand. “I was one of those people who… benefited from your actions. And things were hard for me at first, but now I have a family, and a _life_ … Things I wouldn’t have had if I had stayed at Piccard’s Way. But now something is happening to us and… we really need your help again.”

The wind chime fluttered, gentle notes of glass against metal. The wind bit at his exposed cheeks, sending a chill down his spine.

“Dr Lang,” he muttered, “please…”

For one soul-crushing moment, Markus thought the door would remain shut. But then, bolts and latches started unfastening themselves from the other side, and the door swung open.

He was pulled in before he could even say a word.

If the outside of the house was neat and orderly, the inside was anything but. The space was exceedingly small, the living room barely fitting in a sofa, an armchair and a coffee table, and papers drowned every available surface. A heavy desk pushed against the wall was practically caving under the weight, and Markus frowned at an open suitcase almost overflowing with files on the dining room table. On his left, the corridor supposedly leading to the rest of the house was littered with strewn clothes and balled up pieces of paper alike.  

Dr Lang relocked the door and put all the bolts back in before turning to face Markus. He was shorter than he had expected, almost half a head so. He had aged at least twenty years since the photo in his file was taken and was more heavyset, wrinkles now prominent on his face and hair completely gone at the top of his head. His round glasses sat askew on his nose. “How did you find me here?” he demanded, his voice shaking.

Markus slowly raised his hands in an attempt to reassure him. “…I was one of the people at Detective Collins’ house last night.”

Understandably, the doctor gasped and plastered himself against the door.

“No, no, no, I am not here to hurt you!” he rushed to say. “I am very sorry for putting you through such emotional turmoil, but we had to learn your identity and location.”

“By harassing an innocent man?!” Lang all but shrieked. “That sounds a lot like the Institute to me!”

“I swear to you, I am not with the Institute. But that was the only way we could find you for certain. We did not wish any harm on the detective or you.”

“And what is it that you want from me?”

“Information, that’s all,” Markus assured. “As soon as you help me, I’ll be out of your hair, I promise.”

Lang scrutinised him with his beady blue eyes, enlarged by the high prescription lenses of his glasses. There was obvious reluctance on his face, but Markus almost sagged in relief to see the man give a jerky nod. “Fine. I’ll help you however I can.” He ran a hand over his mouth. “But I’ve been out for years now, I’m not sure how much help I could be.”

“We didn’t know who else to go to,” Markus explained. “You were the only person we knew had worked in the Institute and would be willing assist us.”

“‘We’?” Lang asked. Seemingly only then realising how messy his house must look, he started clearing out papers off his coffee table in a frenzied rush. “Who’s ‘we’?”

“Some friends and I. They were in the program, too. We didn’t know who else to talk to.”

The doctor banged one side of his little pile against the table to straighten the edges. “What was your number?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Your identification number, your designation,” he clarified as he set it aside and started going over a tiny bowl of knickknacks next. “You didn’t come out of that hellhole as ‘Markus’, those cretins weren’t nice enough to give you actual names.”

Markus fidgeted with the bottom of his jacket. No, indeed they weren’t. “I was Subject RK200.”

Lang’s eyes snapped back to him so fast he was surprised the doctor didn’t get whiplash. Astonishment was written on every inch of his face. “An RK?” His gaze seemed more focused now, and he took Markus in more fully…

…and _there_ was that clinical look all those Institute scientists had. A look Markus had grown used to all those years in those sky blue walls. Unattached to any emotion, positive or otherwise. Just a cold, piercing stare, regarding him as if he were a specimen, a novelty, a creation to be prodded and examined from head to toe. To be taught how to behave and given instructions that were expected to be followed.

But then Lang’s gaze dropped back to the coffee table, and the spell was broken. “I heard what they did to the RKs during the raid,” he said in a small voice. “I thought no one survived.”

Markus shook away the phantom heat creeping up his neck, and realised with a start he was standing at attention in the middle of the small room. He stuck his hands in his pockets. “I barely made it out. But you were the one who gave me the chance to even do so.”

The scientist gave a scoff. “Right, I was so helpful, wasn’t I?”

“But you _were_ ,” Markus insisted. He motioned to the armchair. “May I sit?”

Lang blinked in surprise and waved his hand in ascent.

Markus gingerly sat down to be on the same level as the man. “If you hadn’t tipped off the police, those kids would still be human guinea pigs for the Institute. You helped give us new lives-”

“New lives?!” Blue eyes bore into his, Lang’s words clipped. “ _Seven_ children burnt alive, three more shot and sixty-four stuck in the system for maybe their whole lives. You’ll forgive me if I don’t see this as a complete victory.”

“A pyrrhic victory is still better than no victory at all,” Markus muttered. His voice was graver than intended, but he found he couldn’t control it. “Point is, your statement saved our lives. If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t have made it out at all.”

Lang licked his lips nervously. “And what do you want from me now?”

Markus leaned his elbows on his knees. “One of my friends has discovered a pattern of recurring medical issues in people who have received thirium treatments at some point in their lives.” He gestured vaguely with his hands. “People like us. In the simplest way he could explain it, the thirium that failed to bond with our cells has started to attack the systems it was meant to enhance. He calls it thirium deterioration.”

Lang’s eyes widened behind his glasses. With the high prescription lenses, it was quite a comic image. “So it’s actually a thing?”

Markus straightened in his seat. “What do you mean? The Institute _knew_ this would happen?”

The doctor took his glasses off and ran his hands down his face. “I didn’t think before I gave you up, I swear, I never would have-”

“ _Dr Lang,_ ” Markus pressed, getting up to sit next to him on the couch, “they knew this would happen?”

“The formula worked better on kids, it always worked better on kids, that’s why they didn’t use adults in the trials,” he whined, running a hand through his barely existing hair. “It bonded with immature cells best, grew with them, altered them, _enhanced_ them… Adult cells simply didn’t have the same potential. They never meant to start the program with _kids_ , that would be too inefficient to maintain.”

“‘Inefficient’?” Markus said dryly. “Try ‘unethical’.”

“Oh, they had no feelings to spare on ethics, boy, believe me,” Lang retorted with a shake of his head. “They just kept going younger and _younger_ and wouldn’t have stopped until they had achieved the results they wanted.” He licked his lips again, eyes fleeting around the room and very pointedly not looking at Markus. “That’s why… _I_ was brought into the fold.”

Markus stared at him in confusion. Why would Lang be so…

Until it all clicked in his head, and he froze in his seat in shock. “They gave thirium to embryos,” he breathed.

Lang closed his eyes. It was the first time Markus noticed how much the man’s years showed on his face. “Through the mother, yes. And later continued throughout the subjects’ infancy, I would imagine. I didn’t stay for long after that, the higher ups saw some semblance of sense and shut the project down. But then some ten years later, I get a call again. They wanted me to do the same thing, and this time it took their bosses longer to figure out what was going on…” The doctor shook his head. “The amount of foetuses I had to see delivered malformed and underdeveloped halfway through gestation… It almost turned me away from the field I loved.” Blue eyes turned to him, a sea of guilt raging within. “ _That’s_ why I reported them. I figured no threat to my life would ever be worse than children being deprived of their childhood, their right to _live…_ ”

Markus fell heavily against the back of the couch. He had the sudden urge to bring up whatever he had eaten on the way over.

 _Unborn infants._ As if experimenting on children and training them to kill wasn’t enough of a crime against humanity. They had to take it one step further and test their theories on the _unborn._ The unaware and the unwilling. Beings who couldn’t protest or cry out. And their mothers, _god,_ the mothers… Their health and lives endangered for some twisted caprice of people who wanted to interfere with the natural order. Merely sacrifices on the altar of science and for _what?_

“When I heard what they intended to do with the RK unit, I had to act,” Lang muttered, unaware of his inner turmoil. “I couldn’t let them add the lobotomy of _children_ on their list of crimes against the world, I could not.” He looked at him out of the corner of his eyes. “Was I too late?”

Markus had to swallow past a lump in his throat to speak. He couldn’t meet the man’s eye. “Yes.”

Lang let out a shaky breath and buried his face in his hands. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I should’ve-”

“Don’t beat yourself up over that. And it didn’t work anyway.” That was a lie on Markus’ part. But he wasn’t going to go into the specifics of whatever the hell it did instead.

“Bastards, the lot of them…” the doctor spat. “These people had no regards for morals, ethics, _principles_ … If they had a theory they wanted to explore, they did so without a second thought, playing _God_ at the expense of human life, of _children’s_ lives… I wanted to report them the _second_ I knew what I was there for the first time, but how could I? They would have killed me on the spot!”

“You did report them in the end, and that’s what matters. But we need your help again,” Markus urged, laying a hand on Lang’s arm. “Earlier you didn’t seem surprised by what I told you. The Institute knew thirium was harmful?”

The doctor contemplated the hand on his arm. He gently shook it off. “They had an inkling, I suppose. Adults who were part of the earliest trials suffered detrimental damage to their nervous system. A-and preliminary tests on rats showed that thirium attacked cells once they matured if they hadn’t bonded with the host.” He gave a noncommittal shrug. “That’s why they started the trials on embryos. They figured that if they introduced the thirium to the system early enough, then it would fully integrate with the cells of the recipient. But that method never worked.”

“We’re gonna need everything you know, Dr Lang,” Markus said, standing up. “ _Anything._ Chemical regimens, protocols, side effects, anything you can give us that might help us figure out how to stop this.”

But Lang only took off his glasses and shook his head. “I would love to, my boy. I really, would, but I was never part of that process. I only studied the foetal development of embryos on a thirium treatment.”

Markus rubbed at his forehead in exasperation. He had _not_ come all this way for nothing, not with what he had discovered today. “Any notes you have would be better than nothing. We are truly desperate for information, doctor.”

Lang regarded him thoughtfully before giving a determined nod. “Alright. I’ll see what I can pull up for you. But my name stays out of your research, you hear me?”

“Loud and clear,” he assured him. He wasn’t about to pass his help up over formalities.

Seemingly satisfied with the answer, the doctor got up and walked past Markus to his desk. He pulled the last drawer open. “I hope your friend is not considering publishing his findings,” he said over his shoulder as he pulled yet more files out and set them carefully on the floor. Honestly, what could warrant such copious amounts of paper? “The last thing you want is to have the entirety of the United States government after your heads.”

Markus frowned at his words. “What are you talking about?”

“Well, imagine how they would react if a scientific paper came out with the word ‘thirium’ plastered all over it,” the man explained, straightening out the stack he had already made. “An agent would be on your doorstep before you could even think to regret it.”

“Doctor, I don’t follow, what-why would the government care about a science paper?”

The doctor’s hands stilled inside the drawer. Slowly, he turned his head around to regard him with wide eyes. “You… you don’t know?”

He really wasn’t enjoying the way his stomach was turning into knots. “Know what?”

Lang used the edge of the desk to bring himself shakily to his feet. “No one ever told you why you were all there? Why they were giving you all those drugs, why they were training you in the first place? What you were _meant_ for?”

It had been a long while since Markus had felt this way under someone’s gaze. So _small_. Only his first foster parents had ever managed it, and he had never wanted to feel the same way again. And yet, here he was. “…t-to kill people. To deceive them, to spy on them-”

“For the _government,_ ” Lang cut him off. “This whole endeavour to genetically enhance children and train them to _kill_ was paid for and intended to make assassins for the _United States government._ ”

 _Why are we learning all this stuff, ma’am?_ Markus had asked one his trainers once.

 _To protect your country, RK200,_ the stern woman had replied. _To keep those who would wish harm on our people away._

Other similar statements, too.

 _You’re gonna offer so much to this country,_ one of the teachers had said on his perfect test scores once.

 _This country needs more young people like you,_ a stone-faced man had said when he successfully disassembled an assault rifle first in his class.

 _Your country will be proud,_ a trainer had commended when he broke another RK’s arm when sparring.

He had thought them harmless praise, when he had thought back on his life in his late teens, with any chance of being adopted fading away and the possibility of simply aging out of the system creeping ever closer. Positive reinforcement for kids to be proud about what they had achieved, to make them feel like they were part of something greater. He had never thought they had been literal, but _now…_ “…the Institute was run by the government?”

“Still is, I would imagine.” Lang gave a dry laugh. “Think on _that_ next time you vote.”

“What? No, the Institute is not…” Markus took a shaky breath: there seemed to be too little air in his lungs. “The Institute went down in 2022, they got us all out.”

The doctor’s eyes grew impossibly wider. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

“Doctor, the police took down the Institute in the raid,” Markus said irritably, even though he couldn’t tell where the anger was coming from. “It’s not operating anymore, what are you _talking_ about?”

The next laugh out of the doctor’s mouth was downright hysterical. “You really think a place like that would keep all their eggs in one basket? Have only one location to conduct experiments from?! Piccard’s Way was just the test grounds, not the main headquarters!”

“But - no, it can’t…” Markus rumbled, clutching his head with his hands. This could _not_ be happening-

“You think the people that ran this thing would let themselves get caught so easily?” Lang went on, voice getting more high-pitched with each word. “You think such an expensive investment wouldn’t have contingencies plans in place for that reason exactly?!”

Markus’ legs were suddenly too weak to support his whole weight. He had to throw an arm against the back of the armchair. “How many more of us?”

“Forty, at least.” The doctor’s look was almost apologetic. “Although I doubt they stayed at that number for long. With the stable formula, they might have even moved on to adults by now.”

The lack of major arrests when the raid was over. The closed adoptions of the children that _did_ manage to get adopted, and the secrecy with which the officers-in-charge insisted the rest of them were integrated into homes. Collins believing him and North were Institute agents so easily when they visited him.

Nathan Wesley. A man who, by all intents and purposes, should have been in jail, but was running a multibillion dollar company instead.

Ten children dead, forty still under the influence, and the monsters behind it all protected by the government.

“Why-why didn’t you tell the police about the other location?” Markus implored haltingly. “If there were more children in danger, why didn’t you tell anyone? Why didn’t you _try?!_ ”

“I told them!” Lang insisted. “Believe me, I did! But no one knows where it is, I only ever went there with an escort and a sack over my head, I didn’t _know_ where it was!”

“And no one else did? Of all the people they arrested, no one knew?”

The doctor laughed. “Who would say anything?! No one wanted someone from HQ to come after them! You think I am hiding out here for shits and giggles?!”

“Then why are you still _here_ if you thought the Institute was coming here?” Markus wondered.

For once during this whole visit, Lang faltered. He fidgeted with the edge of his tie nervously. “I-I was waiting for my new papers to come in,” he stuttered. “Passports, money, plane ticket, the works. Even had my bags almost sorted,” he added, waving towards the suitcase in the dining room. “I was gonna be out of here and in a non-extradition country by the end of the day!” He smoothed the offending item against his round belly. “And I suggest you prepare to do the same. Whatever you do with this, _stay off their radar._ You said you had a family, yes? I assume your friends have people they care about, too?”

Markus gave a mute nod. _Carl…_ even Leo to an extent. Could they be in danger by associating with him?

“I was lucky,” he said. “I had nothing outside of my career and they destroyed _that_ the moment I disappeared. _Don’t_ let them get to you. These are sharks you are swimming with, and they're ever fond of the smell of blood in the water!”

But then, cold realisation washed over Markus. “…we have to find them.”

Lang frowned. “Find who?”

“The rest of us that were rescued in the raid,” he explained, eyes wide. “We have to talk to them, _warn_ them the Institute is still active. What if more of us get sick and this becomes public? They might come after them and silence them!”

“And how do you suppose you’re gonna do that?”

Markus ran a hand over his short-cropped hair in though. “Do you happen to know anyone who would know how to track them down? Or at least have access to our files in the foster system?”

At his words, Lang looked positively offended. “Are you _insane?!_ That’s _exactly_ the thing that will get you on their radar!” he exclaimed.

“Doctor, if we don’t talk to these people, they might _die_ ,” Markus said. “Institute or no Institute, the thirium they received is still dangerous.” In a last ditch effort, he moved closer until he was almost nose to nose with the man. “We have to reach out and help them, we don’t have a choice. Isn’t that why you gave the operation up to the police? To save us?”

Lang seemed conflicted, the turmoil evident in his blue eyes. But at last, he let out a deep sigh. “Alright, alright…”

“So you’ll help!”

“As much as I can,” he agreed. “I’ll have to ask my contact about any trial files or the subjects’ current identities, but there’s one girl I kept tabs on myself. Talking to her might be… a bit difficult, though.”

Markus raised an eyebrow. “Difficult how?”

“She was part of my last project at the Institute, Project Eve - the only embryo that was carried to term and survived infancy with no complications. Subject BL100-E, must have been around two at the time?”

Markus wracked his brain to remember. They had been mostly separated by age, the youngest children in his group barely eleven, but he had heard some chatter about a toddler that had been rescued along with them. “Yeah, I think I remember …”

The doctor cast a sheepish look to the floor. “I tried to follow the lives of the children I had a hand in bringing into this world. The ones that were rescued, anyway. The other one died a few years back – accident,” he added at Markus’ concerned look, “but BL100-E was fine last time I checked in on her. A couple adopted her after the raid, called her Blaire Kravitz. She still lived in the Detroit area until recently, but…” He fidgeted with his tie again. “…she’s been missing for a couple of months now.”

Dread ran down Markus’ spine. “…you think the Institute found her.”

“Honestly, I have no idea,” Lang said earnestly. “It wouldn’t be the first time they tried to reacquire one of their more expensive specimens _._ But you’ll have to eliminate all possibilities first. I’d suggest talking to her donor before you do anything else.”

“Her donor?”

“Subject BL100. I don’t know how they found each other, but Blaire mentioned her once. I wanted to talk to her myself, but I couldn’t risk reaching out. I think her name was…” His face pinched in concentration, wracking his brain for a name, but he shook his head with a huff. “Crap, I can’t remember… Let me check my contacts, I think I might have written it down there,” he said, leaving Markus amidst the mess of files to rush down the hallway that led to the rest of the house.

A yelp came seconds later.

Markus whipped his head towards the sound. Every one of his reflexes was on high alert. “Dr Lang?” he called.

Slow steps started coming down the hallway. Markus froze at the sight.

A masked man, dressed head to toe in black, slowly walked a trembling Dr Lang into the light, the suppressor of a gun pressed against his temple.

The dark eyes fixed on Markus’ face over Lang’s shoulder were calculating.

Familiar.

A phantom pressure built at Markus’ side. Slowly, he raised his hands up. “Hello again.”

The two men came to a stop four feet away. Gloved fingers readjusted their grip on the gun. “I suppose you’re the reason that I’m here?” the intruder asked and _there_ was that voice again, muffled by the black fabric once more, no less cold than the night he had shot the tires out of Markus’ motorbike on the highway.  

“Let Dr Lang go,” he demanded. “You can have me if you want.”

The arm around the doctor’s neck tightened and Lang trembled in response. “I have orders,” the intruder replied calmly, “and these orders do not include you.” He motioned with his chin. “Weapons on the floor.”

“I don’t carry any weapons,” Markus lied. Despite the frantic rhythm of his heart, his voice remained even. “I just came here to talk to Dr Lang.”

The intruder studied his face before saying, in a measured voice, “Knife in your boot. Now.”

And suddenly, it was clear. Because the man’s eyes hadn’t left his face for a second, yet he knew. And he knew because it used to be standard procedure. Because it was obviously _still_ standard procedure. “You’re with the Institute,” Markus breathed.

“As were you, apparently.”

Markus’ stomach dropped. “You heard all that?”

“I heard enough. Knife on the floor.” He pushed Lang a step forward, a whimper escaping the man in his arms. “Or Dr Lang dies.”

“Please…” Lang begged, tears rolling down his cheeks. “…you don’t have to do this… Just let us go, I won’t talk to anyone else, I swear, _please…_ ”

The gun, instead, pressed harder against the trembling man’s temple. “I won’t ask again.” By the tone of his voice, he meant every word.

Slowly, right hand still in the air, Markus bent down to remove the blade from his boot.

The sound of a silenced gunshot reached his ears.

He only had enough time to raise his eyes before Dr Lang’s body barrelled into him.

Markus lost his balance and fell backwards, barely managing to use his elbow to take the brunt of the fall; it still wasn’t enough, and his head collided with the wooden floor, hard enough to make him see stars. He pushed the limp body off of him and made to get up, but caught the black blur about to kick him out of the corner of his eye, and rolled away and up just in time to avoid the hit.

The movement jostled his still tender ribs, but he suppressed a wince to lock eyes with the agent standing in front of him. The gun was gone, and the man’s body was coiled underneath his black clothing, but his eyes were steady, inquisitive, taking every little detail in. Markus knew exactly what he was seeing: he was breathing heavily, ever so slightly favouring his right side, and he could already feel sweat building up underneath his thick jacket. He’d have to compensate for his hindrance, he knew, as the agent would be extra focused on exploiting any openings to his right side.

The black-clad man scuffed his shoe against the floor, and Markus’ eyes dropped to it at the sudden movement.

And that was his mistake.

His opponent had crossed the small distance between them before he could even blink and landed an open-palmed strike against his nose – it made an audible _crack_ on impact, and Markus bent forward on instinct at the eye-watering pain. The agent wasted no time taking fistfuls of denim and raising his knee to strike at his chest. Markus barely managed to use his hands to block, but not enough to keep the air from being knocked out of his lungs.

His hands slipped away, and the second blow landed full force on his ribs.

Markus grunted in pain, ribcage on fire, but the agent was not done. He pulled Markus up by the arms, pushed him back, and hooked a leg around the one holding most of his weight, kicking it out from under him and letting his head slam on the carpet.

His skull exploded in pain. His vision swam dangerously, furniture blurry and tipping to one side whenever he tried to focus. The coppery taste of blood flooded his mouth; his nose was bleeding from the hit. Through half-closed eyes, he could make out the body of Dr Lang, lying amidst a sea of scattered papers on the carpet, something violently red marring his right temple.

Black combat boots entered his line of sight. He followed the length of the agent’s body up to his face, still obscured and blurry in Markus’ vision. The figure seemed to tilt their head to the side. “Markus…” he mused.

The blood in his mouth made him choke on a reply.

The agent took a step back, and something hard collided with the side of Markus’ head before everything went dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> P.S.: For anyone who's going to ask, an explanation on the designations used here will be given in later chapters.


	6. What We Were Taught

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The night is young, and Markus and Connor both have cards to play.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: *churns out most of this chapter in three days*  
> also me: *gets stuck on the last scene for a week*
> 
> At last, the chapter I've been dying to write. It's here! It's early! And it's bigger than all the rest! And it would have been a lot bigger if I hadn't separated it into two parts, so great news, the high gay energy will continue for another chapter!
> 
> And who knows? December is big, it's festive, it's my birthday month... Maybe Santa will come early for all of us :3c
> 
> The Spotify playlist has been updated with suggestions made by you guys! Feel free to drop more songs in the comments below!
> 
> P.S.: Something is brewin' with this story. Keep your eyes on future notes for updates.

Lights flittering in and out of his vision, a never-ending sea of gold and black. Thoughts like molasses churning in his skull.

_And this man you’re going to meet… Are you sure he’s on your side?_

_We have no other option. I have to go out there and ask him what he knows._

Darkness. Cold. A metallic taste lingering in his mouth.

_And how did you even find him? I can’t imagine you had his phone lying around._

_We just asked some people, okay? North and I went to an old acquaintance last night._

_North… the one who brought that rifle to the house last week._

Body floating, limbs barely there, the vague feeling of the ground shaking beneath him. A soft breeze caressing his face.

_I’ll see you when I come back. Don’t wait up again._

_Markus, come here._

_What is…? No, no, you don’t have to-_

_I want to. Maybe then you’ll get it through that thick head of yours._

The soft murmur of… music? Words barely distinguishable over the buzzing in his ears:

 _“_ _I left my soul exposed to frail hands who hold  
My fate up in the air  
And through their fingers fall the meaning of it all  
Down to the floor it goes_ _…”_

_Take my hand, Markus._

_You really don’t have to do that._

_Shut up and get down here. Now… what am I feeling?_

What was he feeling? All at the tip of his tongue, vibrating under his skin. Regret. Confusion. Anger.

Fear.

_Why are you afraid?_

_Because you’re my son. And you don’t talk to me about what you’re doing with the others anymore._

_Carl…_

_Something has changed in you. Ever since Daniel. Ever since North rang the doorbell, really._

_I’m doing this for you. I don’t want you to get excited over nothing._

_Are you sure it’s all just for me?_

Suddenly, stillness. Something soft gently wiping at his face. Warmth enveloping his chest, and his body huddling closer to it.

_I understand that you don’t want to tell me everything. But that doesn’t mean that I’ll stop worrying. Or that I won’t be there for you. Whatever the case._

_…I know._

An uncomfortable pressure against his ribs. Blood rushing to his head. The muffled sense of his body not being his own.

_Just… be careful. I don’t want you to get in over your head with this… I don’t want to lose another son._

By the time the fog in Markus’ mind had cleared enough, he was no longer in Lang’s house.

A metallic clink was the first thing he registered through the ringing in his ears, not much unlike the wind chime he had been admiring on Lang’s porch. His head weighed a ton and his nose was throbbing dully, but not as much as it already should have been. There was no way drugs weren’t involved in his current state of mind. Markus would have thought his assailant considerate to sedate him if he hadn’t been the source of his pain in the first place. Or if he hadn’t shot Dr Lang in the head right in front of him.

It took a little longer to force his eyelids open. Moonlight was streaming in through windows behind him, doing little to chase away the harsh shadows in the room. What little he could see was old and rundown, cobwebs in every corner and dust thick enough for footprints and drag marks to be imprinted on it. Several pieces of the wood panelling on the walls were missing, and he couldn’t tell if a particularly dark patch of space on the wall ahead of him was a hole or mould.

Another detail that seemed pretty pertinent at the moment: his hands were bound behind the back of his chair. He tried sitting up, and immediately let out a groan as the sudden movement sent a jolt of pain through the back of his skull.

The clinking stopped. “You’re awake.”

Markus raised his head slowly. The agent from Wesley’s house _–Lang’s murderer–_ melted out of the shadows from behind a tall buffet cabinet to his right, hands casually in his pockets.

It only took a moment for Markus to become acutely aware he was going to die.

The black hood hiding the man’s face was finally gone. Shadows played in his immaculately styled brown hair and made it look almost black, a single unruly strand falling on his forehead. The moonlight bathed his pale face, bringing into sharp relief high cheekbones and a cleft chin set into a youthful face, surprisingly younger that what he had imagined. Handsome enough for the Institute’s standards, unassuming enough to lull his targets into a false sense of security.

An assassin’s first weapon.

Markus’ death sentence.

“I took the liberty of resetting your nose after breaking it, I hope you don’t mind.” The agent retrieved a rickety foldable chair leaning against one wall and opened it, examining the old frame. “The belt shouldn’t be too tight. I had to improvise.”

That was _certainly_ not what he had expected to hear. Markus blinked through the fog of whatever lingering drug was still in his system and the throbbing of his skull. “Excuse me?” He managed to rein in the slur in his voice, at least.

“We might be here a while,” the man explained, tone almost conversational. He set the chair down a few feet in front of Markus’ own and placed his hands on the back, giving a little shrug. “I wouldn’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

Maybe it was the drugs. Maybe it was the fear of imminent death hovering above his head. But Markus didn’t even attempt to contain his scoff. “Let's not kid ourselves. If you’re gonna kill me, just get it over with.”

“And why would I do that?”

“Showing me your face? That was either a rookie mistake or a declaration of intent. And you don’t strike me as a rookie.”

The man lowered his gaze briefly, Markus catching the minutest uptick of his lip in the shadows of his face, before looking at him again. “I thought you'd appreciate looking at my actual face and not a mask while we talk. And your death is not my call, anyway.”

Markus nodded thoughtfully, a wry smile stretching his lips. “Right. Because you only follow orders.”

“Lucky for you, in this case.”

“Yeah, sure. _Lucky._ ” He strained against his bonds, testing the give, finding them pretty sturdy and tightly wound around his wrists. Then he remembered what the agent had said. He looked down at the waist of his jeans. “You tied me up with my own _belt?_ ”

“Best thing I could do in short notice,” the agent replied unabashedly, taking a seat in the rickety chair. Even his stance was unyielding: his back was almost ramrod straight, hands folded neatly in his lap. “Adaptation _is_ a skill valued in an agent. Or did you forget that, Markus?”

His name out of the man’s lips sent a chill down his spine. “So you know my name now. Am I supposed to congratulate you or…?”

“Oh, I know more than that now,” the agent countered. “Markus Manfred, born December 25, 2009, blood type O negative, trained EMT, licensed in both car and motorcycle driving, last known address at 8941 Lafayette Avenue, Detroit.” A gloved hand reached inside the pocket of his black hoodie and produced a rectangular object. It took longer than expected for Markus’ muddled brain to register it as his wallet. “And apparently, former Institute subject RK200.”

He was sure the bitterness in his throat was more than just the aftertaste of the blood he had swallowed. “I’d clap, but my hands are tied.”

“The sentiment is not necessary in this instance.”

The detachment of the man unnerved Markus. Was this what would have become of him if he had stayed, too? “How did you find me?” he asked, letting all his discomfort colour his voice.

“I told you. My orders did not include you. I was there for Dr Seymour Lang. He had been evading the government’s radar for sixteen years after disappearing with classified information on its more intimate operations. Our technicians finally registered his voice print in an outgoing phone call from one of our monitored numbers and were able to pinpoint his location.”

Markus closed his eyes. “You were monitoring Collins’ calls.”

The agent before him nodded.

One would think he would have grown used to guilt by now. But every time it managed to creep up on Markus like a snake. His heart constricted in his chest in a way that his newly-sore ribs had no hand in. “So it’s my fault he is dead.”

“We would have found him sooner or later. You and your friend just expedited the inevitable.”

Markus’ arms tensed against his bonds, but he had half a mind to keep all other reactions in check. The less he showed about his friends, the better. “And those ‘intimate operations’? That was him talking to the police, wasn’t it?”

“The specifics of the information he stole are above my clearance level, and I was not sent to his home to retrieve it.”

“No, you were just sent there to kill him instead.”

“Yes.” The agent did not even blink as he said it. “That was, indeed, my job.”

Markus chuckled. “Your job… So it wasn’t your _duty?_ ”

The agent cocked his head to the side.

“What? They don’t use that line anymore? ‘You’re doing this to protect your country’, ‘your country is gonna be so proud of you’, ‘you’re going to protect so many people’…” He studied the agent’s face. “Don’t they tell you the same story, too?”

The man before him frowned at his words. “It’s not a story, Markus,” he said. “The Institute is a subservient of the United States government and operates at its discretion.”

Markus gave a dry chuckle. “And you believe that?”

“Maybe it _you_ did, you wouldn’t think we are so bad.”

“So bad?” he echoed, dumbfounded. “A group that kidnaps kids and forces them to become guinea pigs and murderers is not ‘so bad’?!”

“The Institute perfected the thirium formula in 2022,” the agent explained. His words were slow and clear, as if he was talking to a child. “There was no need for trials after that, and thus no need for child recruits.”

“Recruits – we were _children!_ ” Markus exclaimed, the volume of his voice jarring to his still ringing ears. “Most of us no older than two or three!”

“There are only adult agents serving in this unit now,” the agent ignored him. “So it would seem we have rectified this ‘mistake’, as you see it.”

It was a mistake, alright. But how deep did their brainwashing go for him not to see it? “And what kind of people would wish to be genetically enhanced and trained to kill for a living?”

“Those who have no other place to go,” his captor offered with a shrug. “Who have fallen low and want to make something of themselves, serve their country in ways no other agency can.”

Markus studied the man incredulously. “The lies you tell them to convince them…”

“We do not lie, Markus. We give a second chance to people who don’t have any. A chance to serve a cause bigger than themselves. To protect this country and this government from those who wish to undermine them. And we do it by means no other agency is able to utilise. I don’t see how this could be considered ‘bad’.”

“So a black ops program,” he deadpanned.

“Ours is neither the first nor the last government to have need for such operations.” The agent’s eyes narrowed at him. “You don’t strike me as a person naïve enough to think so.”

Markus worried at his nails behind his back in thought. “And your government wanted you to execute a man for trying to save children’s lives.”

“This man was a threat to our operations,” he explained. “The information he possessed was valuable and could expose this unit and its activities.”

“So you killed him. In cold blood.”

Finally, there was one emotional response out of the man across from him: annoyance. “I’ve killed many people, Markus. I don’t see why I should lose sleep over this one.”

The urge to snap, to rail, to fight, was bubbling under Markus’ skin with every breath he took. But he had to contain himself. He had to stay calm. Every non-verbal reaction gave more fuel to the trained dog before him. “How long does it take to lose your humanity like that?”

The agent raised an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t know. But I can ask, if you’d like.”

“Thanks, but I’d rather not lose my faith in people just yet.” Markus made a show of relaxing against the back of his chair, mindful of any sudden moves of his head, the plastic creaking ominously under his weight. “So where _do_ you find people to recruit?” he asked conversationally. “I don’t suppose walking into a college campus does the trick in this case.”

His captor mimicked the action, loosely folding his arms over his chest. It was the first shift he had made in his posture since sitting down. “Some are offered a job with us to get out of a prison sentence. Others are recruited right out of the foster system.” He gave a small shrug. “There’s always people to find. People who want to serve this country.”

Markus, though, saw the pattern behind his words. “People who won’t be missed.”

His captor drummed his fingers against his bicep, face ever impassive. “Nothing I can say will convince you, will it?” he murmured thoughtfully.

“Probably not,” Markus agreed. “There’s not a lot that can excuse experimenting on children, after all.”

The agent gave a breathy chuckle. “That’s fair, I suppose.” He leaned forward in his seat, elbows on his knees; the perfect picture of casualness. But Markus could see something else in the dark pools of his eyes. A bird of prey studying his quarry. “How long _were_ you with them, anyway? You seem to have strong feelings for the people who supposedly raised you.” 

“And you don’t?” Markus retorted. “How long have _you_ been with them not to?”

His captor gave a sly smile. “Deflecting is not going to help you in this case.” He levelled him with a searching gaze. “It must had been a while. The RK subjects were some of the youngest, right?”

Markus did not respond.

“It’s what Dr Lang said, too,” he went on, undeterred. His voice was quiet, yet every word sank into Markus’ skin like a burning needle. “They _had_ to be for the treatment to work better. ‘Cause they had to be the best of the best. That’s why they were the elite unit. The ones meant to receive the perfected thirium formula before anyone else.” His brow furrowed. “If this formula is what that friend of yours is looking for to save the others, why hasn’t he…? Unless…” Realisation seemed to dawn within his eyes. He stippled his fingers together in his lap. “Tell me, Markus, do your friends know you won’t face the same side effects as them?”

“What are you talking about?” Markus asked.

The agent made a non-committal gesture with his hand. “All RK subjects received Thirium 310 before the unit was disbanded, did they not? That was their purpose. To be mission-ready before anyone else. Among other things, at least.”

Markus wasn’t getting sick.

_Markus wasn’t getting sick._

Simon had made little progress in figuring out how thirium actually bonded with the human body. But one thing he _had_ figured out is that the length of treatment and the age of the person when receiving it seemed to play some role in the onset of its deterioration. The first four people Simon had taken samples of (the initial patient whose blood work he had examined and three others he remembered from his orphanage) had been older when they received the thirium, and thus showed signs earlier. Josh had been six at the time of his treatment, and it was becoming harder to hide the hand tremors the longer time went on. Simon himself had been four, and only had fatigue to show for it. Markus and North, both treated from the age of three, had showed no signs of thirium deterioration so far, but he had been treated for longer and was older than North by two years. One of them should have started showing signs already, yet without a wider test pool, Simon could not be certain who or when.

But now Markus knew.

It wasn’t going to be him.

He was safe.

And his friends weren’t.

The bastard before him tilted his head inquisitively. “Judging by your expression, I am going to say no.”

Markus’ hands balled into fists. The blood pounding through his veins was painfully loud, every pump a drumbeat against the inside of his head. He was using Markus’ Institute status to make him feel guilty. But Markus wasn’t going to let him. He’d had enough people inside and outside the Institute do that already. This asshole wouldn’t be the one to win. “How do you know so much about the RK unit?” he demanded.

The agent straightened in his seat, back to the rigid position he was in before. “Whoever seeks, finds,” he quipped.

“Did you also find out why they disbanded the RK unit? _How_ they disbanded the RK unit?”

“I did not,” he said, an eyebrow raised, “but I have a feeling you are going to tell me anyway.”

Markus’ nape was already burning at the mere recollection. He dug his nails in his palm to ground himself to reality. “I was there to _see it._ See what they are truly capable of. Was led with six others into the infirmary before the supervisors threw Molotov cocktails inside and locked the doors. To get rid of ‘faulty experiments’.” Not even Josh could stop him now. He was on a roll. If this asshole wanted his thoughts on the matter, he was going to get them. “You shouldn’t be surprised I have strong feelings for the people that raised me. Because they are the same people who turned children into lab rats and trained them to kill. Who, when backed into a corner, chose to burn children alive to destroy the evidence of their cruelty. Who tried to _kill_ me when I was no longer useful to them. So no, _agent_ , nothing you can say can convince me that the Institute is good, no matter how many people they _‘save’._ ”

Silence fell across the room. The agent stared calmly back at him, unflappable as ever. Markus wanted to wipe the indifferent expression off his face. “It’s a shame you defected,” he finally said. His hands were balled into fists in his lap. “Such strong convictions are of great value to an agent.”

“I didn’t _defect,_ ” Markus spat. “I finally saw how abhorrent those people are. How long will it take for _you_ to see it?”

The soft vibration of a cell phone cut the tension like a knife.

The agent relaxed his fingers against his thighs with what seemed like some effort. He fished a _flip phone?!-_ out of his pocket to check the notification that had come through and let out an exaggerated sigh. “It seems our time has to be cut short.”

Markus didn’t deign him with a response.

His captor quirked an eyebrow and rose from his seat. “I’m not going to cover your mouth, since your nose has yet to set.” He walked over to the buffet cabinet and pulled out a black case, unzipping it slowly. “You can try and shout, but this neighbourhood is mostly abandoned. But just in case…”

The needle of a syringe glinted in the moonlight as he removed it from his kit.

Markus gave an involuntary jerk back, the back of his head seizing in protest, but the agent just shook his head. “It’s just a sedative, nothing worrisome,” he reassured him, stabbing the top of a small bottle and filling the syringe with liquid. “I gave you some on the way over, too.”

His heart wouldn’t stop beating loudly against his ribcage. Nevertheless, Markus forced his face into a neutral expression. “It would be really inconvenient if I was allergic to anything.”

“Recruits are tested for allergies and adverse reactions to various substances before entering the program,” the agent replied without missing a beat. “I’m going to guess that all RK subjects were placed under the same scrutiny, too.” He flicked the side a few times and looked back at Markus, face half-hidden in shadow. “I would hate for our conversation to end too abruptly.”

Markus couldn’t say he shared the sentiment.

/0\

To say that Connor was having a frustrating evening would be an understatement.

The Lang mission should have been a simple-in-and-out job. Infiltrate the house, dispose of the target, set the scene and move out. But then the target had received a phone call from a contact about to get him out of the country, and Connor had stayed hidden to find out who that was and report back to his superiors. In light of his recent failure, he had wanted to be thorough with his newest assignment.

And then came _Markus_.

Markus, the shooter from Nathan Wesley’s house. Markus, previously subject RK200. Markus, defective agent of the Institute.

Markus, who had been taken from under the Institute’s sphere of influence along with sixty-three others in 2022.

_2022._

The year kept bouncing around Connor’s skull as he drove, his mind left in a whirlwind in its wake. It was the year Operation Blue Castle commenced. The year he first went undercover, an eleven-year-old barely out of conditioning and with only the most basic training an agent could receive. The year his earliest memories stopped.

Protocol stated that he should have executed him on the spot, or at the very least brought him in. But then Markus would have been taken away, probably to be interrogated or executed, and Connor would have lost his one chance to find out what had transpired that year. The mission records were sealed to him _–“for the best,” Amanda said, smile soft from the bedside–_ and his superiors had not been forthcoming over the years for obvious reasons. But this man, who had now disrupted his missions _twice_ , seemed to be his only chance at unveiling the events that had landed him on an infirmary bed for three months.

He could chalk this all up to coincidence, but in his line of work, there was hardly any coincidence. And a man who had been groomed by the same organisation he now worked for, who was going after former Institute associates, and who shared the same subject designation as Connor, could be anything but.

As far as he knew, a police raid on one of their branches in 2022 was not common knowledge among agents and recruits alike. This lent to the theory that Blue Castle could possibly be related to it. But then why inform staff of an unimportant raid that happened sixteen years prior if it didn’t pertain to an active mission? Further questioning RK200 would shed more light on the situation, whatever that was. And if no connection established itself, Connor could at least inquire after his apparent vendetta against the Institute, and the people who worked with him towards it.

So many recruits turned away from their cause before their conditioning could be finished… How could they allow this to happen?

…but then how could the Institute allow recruits to burn instead of extracting them?

Connor stared at his hands, pale skin in stark contrast with the black of the steering wheel. Markus had been very particular about the fact that it was the RK subjects that were lead to such a violent demise. If he had been thirteen at the time, then Connor had been eleven. The time he underwent the final procedure. Had the other RK subjects undergone the procedure…

Connor swallowed thickly.

The Institute wouldn’t be the first or the last government agency to destroy evidence in order to avoid prosecution. But burning test subjects alive, subjects no older than him…

The steering wheel cricked under his fingers. He looked down, noting how his knuckles had turned white with the force of his grip. He relaxed his fingers against the fake leather.   

Connor pulled up a few blocks down the road from Lang’s house. The man had chosen his hideout well, situated in a sparse residential area at the edge of the woods. Connor’s initial research had indicated that if one were to walk from that house to the other side of the woods, they would end up at a highway, a perfect place to make a quick escape from. He used those woods now to disguise himself in the dark and walk the remaining way to the target’s house, under the cover of trees and shadows thick enough to hide his progress. When he, at last, came up to the target’s back yard, he walked the short distance through the well-kept lawn and to the single door leading to the inside.

The moment he swung the kitchen door open, a pair of disposable shoe covers was thrown at his feet. “Put these on and come with me.”

Connor contemplated the blue protective gear and raised his gaze to the cleaner’s face. “Are these necessary? I’ve already been in here.”

Despite AX400’s petite frame and current choice of attire _–disposable coveralls, surgeon’s mask around her neck, shoe covers, gloves–_ , her frigid grey-blue eyes were no less commanding. “And look how well that turned out. _Put them on,_ ” she stressed and disappeared down the hall.

Connor had no choice but to comply.

In the living room, the body of Dr Seymour Lang lay amidst scattered sheets of paper right where it had landed during the fight. The blood from the gunshot wound to his temple had sipped onto them and the faded carpet beneath. On the couch by the door, the cleaner had spread a sheet of protective plastic and situated a bulky industrial case on top of it, no doubt carrying all equipment she could possibly need to set the scene as needed and dispose of any incriminating evidence.

Except currently she was standing in front of the desk, hands on her hips, a displeased frown on her usually calm face. She pointed to a particular bloody spot on the carpet, a few feet away from the doctor’s body. “Is this your blood?” she questioned.

Connor could picture the shooter lying on the floor, choking on the blood running down his face, the excess dripping into the worn fibres of the exact spot she was referring to. “No. It’s the other assailant’s.”

The cleaner huffed. “And this was supposed to be staged as a suicide?”

“That was the initial plan, yes. But circumstances do not allow for that now.” He levelled her with a pointed look. “That is why _you_ are here.”

Kara held his gaze, scowl growing deeper into her face. She surveyed the scene around her with a critical eye. One hand gestured vaguely at the body. “Powder burn on his temple indicates the use of a suppressor. Simplest solution is to stage this like a robbery homicide: take money, take small valuables and frame your assailant.”

“No,” Connor replied immediately. “The police cannot have the assailant’s DNA, he might be in the system. We cannot afford them connecting him to this crime scene.”

The cleaner looked positively aghast. “Connor, I cannot remove his blood from the carpet! The fibres won’t hold throughout the removal process, the police would know someone interfered. The whole thing will have to go if you don’t want anything on the scene.”

If the carpet went, then the target’s blood went with it. If _that_ blood went, then there would be no feasible way to stage a scenario where the target was shot in his home, robbery homicide or otherwise. “Then what do you suggest instead?”

Kara stared at the body in thought. He could almost see the gears turning in her head. “Full dissolution of the body. I saw bags and suitcases getting prepped for a trip. Say he fled instead of put a bullet in his head?”

This was so far removed from what his orders had been. But he couldn’t let his superiors know he had captured Markus. Not until he had all the answers he wanted out of him. “How long will this take?”

“The dissolution or the whole scene?” she asked.

“The whole scene.”

Kara cast her eyes about the space. “I’ll need to take the body apart for ease of transport first,” she said thoughtfully. “Dissolution can’t happen here, so that buys some time. Carpet needs to go for incineration, so do the suitcases and the clothes… Where were you hiding?”

“Closet in the hall,” Connor replied.

She cast a glance over her shoulder to the corridor connecting the living room with the rest of the house. “Hood? Gloves?” He nodded. “No need to scrub it, then. Those clothes go, too, then clean-up, setup and a paper trail.” She gave a shrug. “Three hours? Four, tops.”

Connor’s head whipped to the side to look at her. “Can’t you do it faster?”

When her eyes met his again, the blue burnt like ice on his skin. “I just finished debriefing four hours ago. You called me two hours ago with a shitty brief to drive up here, with zero clue as to what to bring with me, and are now asking me to completely dispose of a body and rearrange a murder scene to suit your needs. Because _you_ screwed up. So _no,_ Connor, I _cannot_ do it faster.”

The urge to ball his hands into fists at his sides was strong, but he kept it at bay. “This mission needs to be wrapped up and closed as soon as possible. You can either do this in three hours, or you can leave.” He took one step closer, enough to loom over her with his significant advantage in height. “Which I wouldn’t suggest you do.”

Kara defiantly held his gaze, but the resolve in her eyes was slowly melting away. “I don’t have much choice anyway, do I?”

His face was impassive. “You tell me.”

It wasn’t long before she heaved an angry sigh through her nose. “I do this in three hours… and you keep your end of the deal.”

“That’s what we agreed on, I believe.”

“And you’ll tell them this was your fault? That I was pulled into it with no warning?”

The word had a hard time leaving Connor’s mouth. “…yes.”

Her shoulders seemed to relax. Not completely, but still an encouraging sign. “Then get out of here. I have to get started.”

He caught her arm before she could move past him. Her bicep tensed underneath his grip. “Despite what you might believe, I take no pleasure in holding your transgression over your head,” he admitted. In apology? No. He had nothing to be sorry for.

The cleaner pursed her lips. “But it is awfully convenient to you when you can use it against me, isn’t it?”

His fingers flexed around her arm. “Since you have no intention to rectify your mistake, I have to keep an eye on you. An agent cannot have distractions that would impede their duty. I am merely here to remind you of the fact.”

A nonchalant expression spread across her face. The blue of her eyes on his, however, spoke of the rage within. “You are delaying my work, RK800. I thought you had an interrogation to finish?”

Connor studied her face for a little longer before loosening his grip.  

Kara yanked her arm away with little prompting. She made a show of pulling the surgeon’s mask over her mouth and turning to open her case. He couldn’t make out much of what was inside, but Kara went for a thick syringe with barely a glance at the contents. “IT will have to be alerted to have a paper trail ready before he is due for work,” she said as she flicked it to get the air bubbles out. “Take the shoe covers with you on your way out. Dispose of them in the city and not right outside, if you don’t mind,” she added almost flippantly.

He resisted the urge to sigh in frustration. It would be unprofessional of him. “Call me when you’re done here,” he said as he turned around to leave. “I might need you for something else afterwards. Should you need anything else, don’t hesitate to ask.”

“A little bit of gratitude would be nice,” she mumbled, kneeling next to the body, “but I guess that’s too much to ask of you, isn’t it?”

Connor came to a stop just before the back door. He heard her loud and clear, but didn’t find it necessary to respond. He didn’t need her approval on how he did his job. _Her_ approval didn’t matter. The people who he would debrief, on the other hand, the ones who would judge him for his mistakes in this op? _Their_ approval mattered.

He should have reported this to Amanda. He really, really should have. But what exactly would he have said? That he had found the shooter from Wesley’s house and hadn’t immediately made his way back to Detroit with him? Once he was out of Connor’s hands, there was no way to control what he would say to them. And Connor’s lies to his _handler_ of all people still hung like a noose around his neck.

He should never have lied in his report. He should have accepted whatever punishment was deemed necessary when he had the chance. He probably deserved double that, now. 

But now he had committed. Now he had to interrogate the subject and find out how far-reaching this scheme of his and his conspirators’ was before silencing him once and for all. And _then_ he could go back to Amanda with the new information, and hope his punishment was not long.

One thing was for certain: RK200’s answers could make or break his reputation. And he had to get them fast.

Connor pulled the door open and walked out, the sound of the wind chime from the front porch following him into the chilly night. Markus seemed receptive to emotional stimuli and inclined to righteous outbursts when provoked. Connor _could_ lean into their shared experiences (or at least he assumed), make Markus tell him more about the other facility covertly. And there was always _one_ particular thread he could pull, but that would require AX400’s assistance when she was done with the scene. The more information he could gather, the more targeted and effective mental probing would be later.

But first, he had to play his cards right.

/0\

Coming down from sedation was a mix of reluctant rousing and a desperate uphill climb through sludge. It wasn’t pleasant, it wasn’t easy, and if that asshole put him under one more time, Markus would break the belt holding his hands together and sock the bastard himself. The reprieve they offered from the headache was welcome, but he wasn’t doing it out of the goodness of his heart. He just didn’t want Markus to call out for help.

When he was fully back to himself again, he didn’t move straight away. The metallic clinking sound was back again, and Markus followed it from under his eyelashes to the far left corner of the room. The agent was sitting on the floor, legs folded, flipping a coin with his right hand. He was intent on something on the floor, but Markus could not make out what through half-closed eyes. As he watched, the agent started tossing the coin between his hands, catching it in one and almost immediately sending it back at a steady pace, never fumbling or dropping the coin at all. At one point, he flipped it in the air again and, in a move that had Markus holding back a noise of surprise, started rolling it across his knuckles with the same ease as when he was tossing it from hand to hand.

Markus often forgot that he was capable of more than the average person in the street. Or more than the average Olympic athlete for that matter. The first jarring reminder came when he had finally been enrolled in school, at the age of 15. In his first PE class, and used to having to prove himself better than his classmates, he had outrun every other kid in his class without breaking a sweat in the first minute of laps. The odd looks were curious, but not concerning at the time.

The lingering stares that followed him afterwards were.

He made it a habit of keeping a lid on his physical capabilities in public from then on. The only time he let himself go was when he and North, in the brief time they had ended up at the same foster home together, would go parkouring around the city. The psychologists had suggested an outlet to let themselves use their full potential in the least destructive way possible; this was one of the options Markus had entertained. Letting North in on it had been challenging at first, but worth it in the long run. Seeing her more at ease with him than with people at school was rewarding in an odd way, as were the rare smiles and deep conversations they had on secluded rooftops and hidden nooks of the city. It was a thing that was just theirs, not tied to their tumultuous past or their uneasy present.

And later, when Markus was on his own, scaling the tallest building he could possibly find to escape the boiling emotions of the world around him, the only way to feel like his childhood wasn’t a dream. That it had actually happened. That the body he now occupied indeed belonged to him.  

The coin came down on the man’s right palm and he passed it to the left, catching it between his index and middle fingers with startling accuracy. “It is considered rude to stare,” he said without looking in Markus’ direction.

Markus blinked and raised his head properly, letting all feigned sedation drop. “I thought they taught kids that observing people in their natural environment was the best way to gain an advantage on them. Or something like that, anyway.”

The coin disappeared between one blink and the next, and the agent uncurled himself and rose to his feet in one smooth motion. “I’d hardly consider this a natural environment,” he commented, dusting himself off.

“Any information is useful information,” Markus pointed out. “Wasn’t that another thing they preached, too?”

The agent narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. He reached down and gathered up what he had been looking at: a neat line of five small, white… were those _marshmallows?_ “For someone who is dead set on not associating with the Institute, you seem very inclined to follow their teachings.”

“And you seem to have a penchant for standing in dark corners all the time,” Markus said instead. “But I didn’t point it out before.”

The man didn’t spare him a glance as he wrapped the sweets in a napkin and put them in the cabinet. From within, he pulled out what appeared to be a bakery bag and a bottle of water and approached the chair. He offered the bottle to Markus.

Markus looked at the offered water bottle with a critical eye. The agent only held it up higher. “You said it yourself. If I wanted you dead, you would be dead. Poisoning should be the least of your worries. And we _are_ gonna be here a while. The least I can do is keep you hydrated and fed.”

Markus was still wary, but he couldn’t deny it: his mouth felt uncomfortably dry. He eyed the agent. “I don’t suppose you’re gonna untie me.”

“You’ll forgive me if I don’t,” he replied, cracking the bottle open. He placed it carefully against Markus’ lips and Markus tipped his head back, taking a few desperate gulps.

By the time he took it away, Markus had gone through half of it already. “How long have you been with the Institute?” he asked, genuinely curious.

The agent screwed the bottle shut again. “More than you, I’d imagine.”

“I was with them since I was three years old,” he told him. “Rescued at thirteen. I have ten years of training under my belt. To answer your earliest question.”

He leaned down to test the give of the belt. “Still more than you.”

Markus frowned. “When do they think it’s enough?”

“When you show them it’s enough.”

The words hit Markus so hard the air was almost knocked out of his lungs. When he had been there, nothing seemed to ever be enough. No matter how much he and the other RKs strived, they never seemed to reach their trainers’ expectations. The promise of a name was always the light at the end of a never-ending tunnel, a finish line that moved further away the moment they were close enough to brush their fingers against it. But they never strayed. They were working towards something greater. An identity and the chance to use it to protect others.

And speaking of…

“You never told me your name.”

The agent’s hands paused halfway through opening the bakery bag. “Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters, it’s your name,” Markus said, brow furrowed. “And you already know mine, it hardly seems fair.”

His captor seemed to think about it, then pulled out the pastry from the bag. “A name is just a cover identity. I don’t see how it would be relevant or useful to you.”

“It would help me stop calling you ‘asshole’ in my head. Maybe.” Markus shrugged. “What about a designation instead? If a name is so impersonal to you.”

As he let him take a bite of the pastry, some type of croissant with a ham and cheese filling, the agent’s eyes were intent on anything but Markus’ face. “Eight,” he eventually said.

“Eight?” Markus asked around his mouthful. He swallowed the food. “That’s not a designation I ever heard of.”

“Because it’s not a designation. But that’s all I’m going to offer,” Eight said.

“Because it’s such a big secret?”

“Because you called me an asshole.”

Markus couldn’t tell from the man’s stony face if there was an ulterior motive or just sheer pettiness behind the choice, but he didn’t comment on it. He had more information than he did before. That was a start. “We thought what we learnt would matter,” he mused as he took another bite of the croissant.

Eight frowned. “It does matter.”

He swallowed harshly. “Does it? One wrong experiment and they leave seven children for dead. It didn’t matter that we had followed every instruction ever given to us, or that we had been training our whole lives.” Markus gave a shrug. “In the end, we were expendable.”

The agent seemed to contemplate his words. Markus knew he had a slim chance of getting through to him, but maybe if he tried… “Do you know what the worst part of that day was?”

“What day?”

“The day we were rescued.”

The agent studied his face curiously. “Enlighten me.”

“The wait afterwards. We were placed in a hotel, four or five of us in each room, in those white uniforms they would make us wear, and told to get some rest…” Markus shook his head. “…but none of us did. We were all sitting at the foot of our beds, wide awake _all_ night, waiting for a supervisor to come collect us and take us back to the training centre. But nobody came.” The memory of the four of them staring at each other, waiting for the imaginary ball to drop, once again came unbidden to his mind. “And then the next day people took us aside and told us that everything we had ever known was gone. Can you imagine what that does to a kid?”

Eight was silent. He started gathering the food back up. “I was eleven when I first went undercover,” he murmured.

Markus’ eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “You’re one of the other forty?”

“So it would seem. And sent out into the field with no open channels of communication, no back up, no advanced training to speak of… And remained so for eight years. And then, I was made.”

A sarcastic retort was at the tip of his tongue, but Markus couldn’t make it. He couldn’t _bring_ himself to make it. Who would put an _eleven-year-old_ undercover for _eight years?!_

“They could have left me there. After all, I was of no consequence. I mean, what would one lost agent mean in the grand scheme of things? But…” He put a hand on the back of Markus’ chair to lean closer, face hovering inches above Markus’. His breath ghosted over his face with every word. “…they came back for me. Retrieved me, nursed me back to health, completed my training, and made sure I was ready for all other missions to come. All because I never doubted the system.”

Markus tilted his head up to look him straight in the eyes. His mouth suddenly felt dry again. “I thought there was going to be a point to this.”

“There is,” argued Eight, leaning ever closer. “Because I think it takes a specific kind of person to do this job.”

“And that’s you?”

From this close, Markus could count every single mole scattered on the agent’s face, even in the darkness. “Among others.”

Markus shook his head, eyes narrowed. “They’ve made you into their puppet and you can’t even see it.”

Eight smiled mirthlessly. “Or maybe they saw something in me worth keeping that they never saw in you.”

The tiniest pang went off in Markus’ heart. His surprise at the reaction almost overwhelmed him. “Nice try,” he sneered, “but I don’t care anymore.”

“On the contrary,” the man almost drawled, and Markus did his best to keep his eyes from widening, “I think you still do. You’re too emotional not to.”

“You think you know me _so well…_ ”

“But I do, Markus. We are cut from the same cloth, after all.”

This time, he couldn’t help it. He lunged so that there was almost no space between them, stopping only when his shoulders protested painfully. “ _We_ are _nothing_ alike.”

“Are we not?” he asked, head tilting to one side. He seemed to do that a lot. “We’ve had the same training, same aspirations… Same need for an identity.” His voice took on a more sombre tone. “All to prove ourselves worthy in the eyes of the same people.”

His tone sent a chill down Markus’ spine that he refused to acknowledge. “If it’s people like Nathan Wesley, I’ll pass.”

Something akin to satisfaction shone in Eight’s eyes. “So you were there for revenge that night.”

“Men like him deserve their just deserts. Why were _you_ pointing a gun at him?”

Eight raised an eyebrow. “That’s for me to know and for you to wonder about.”

“Why? Were you doing something you were not supposed to, _agent?_ Spying and pointing a gun at your boss?”

Now both eyebrows shot up in surprise. “You think Nathan Wesley is my boss?”

“Don’t even try to deny it, I saw him when I was there. What did he do to _you_ to warrant a mid-night visit?”

His captor looked almost… impressed. “And you say we are nothing alike.”

“We are _not-_ ”

“You went after a person who had threatened something you hold dear, and were willing to do whatever it took to settle the problem.”

“But I don’t kill people, that’s just you.”

“And yet that night, you pulled the trigger. And not just on Wesley.” The brown eyes before him felt like weights on his soul. “That sounds a lot like me.”

Whatever words were coming next died in Markus’ throat.

The agent pulled away. The air was cold in his wake. He reached for the water bottle left on the floor, never breaking eye contact, and rose to his full height above Markus. There was a self-satisfied smirk on his lips. “Hang tight, RK200. We have a long night ahead of us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics from Is There Anybody Here by The Dear Hunter, as suggested by merry hitman Olive <3

**Author's Note:**

> [Here's the Spotify playlist for this story ^_^](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3FeGFVzM04HIlR8T7bgE25)
> 
> Feel free to suggest songs for the playlist in the comments below!


End file.
